SOS Children's village celebrates founder's 100th birthday

Tirupati: SOS Children's village at Nagampalli in Yerpedu mandal, 20 km from here celebrated its founder Dr Hermann Gmeiner's 100th birthday on Sunday. The SOS Children's village was established at Nagampalli in 2011 and is having 12 family homes each consisting of 8-10 children and a mother.

Separate SOS Youth Home for boys under supervision of male staff was also set up at the village. Various events were held for the inmates in SOS village commemorating the Founder's birthday. SOS Village Director KL George said that Austrian philanthropist Dr Hermann Gmeiner, seven decades ago, reformed the age-old-concept of `Family by blood' and has been engaged in providing a loving home – with a family and a mother, to children without parental care.

He said under the SOS Family strengthening programme, as many as 450 children from 286 women headed BPL families are getting support from SOS Village (Nagampalli). The programme, he said aims to enable families to move out of the vicious cycle of poverty towards greater dignity and self-reliance by ensuring education of children and income generating capacity development of mothers and vocational education support to rural youth.