Happy Sunday everyone,
I’m excited to write about an
organization that I deeply care about, SOS Children’s Villages. The single
biggest non governmental organization that takes care of orphaned and abandoned
children all around the world. They do so by setting up villages where they
foster loving family environment. As of right now, the organization is
sustaining 571 villages. Each village is equipped with homes, community
centers, medical facilities, schools and playgrounds. Each home is headed by a
trained caregiver that focuses on needs of individual child. SOS Children’s
Villages stresses the fact that they work with every child separately since
each one of them has separate necessities and life goals. Together with the
child and a caregiver, they create individual plans for their development.
Now that I have explained what the
organization does, let’s go into the logistics, how the organization is run.
Let me start by saying that despite being the biggest organization in its
field, SOS Children’s Villages is run fully transparently. They have a whole
section dedicated to their financial documents on their website, updated every
year while keeping the old documents accessible. Moreover, the organization
meets each one of Give.org’s 20 Charity Accountability requirements. The organization
has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize numerous times, 2011 being the most
recent nomination. Despite the information provided, I know a lot of my peers
from the class do not like donating to big organizations since the impact might
not be as visible, I would like to address that.
I’m sure everyone knows what is
going on in Syria, especially as only couple days ago the United States, France
and UK have conducted air strikes against Syrian government for using Chemical
weapons against their population. SOS Children’s Villages is one of the
organizations that fights to defend the future of thousands of children that
are born and raised in war. We as a class have an opportunity to help one of
those kids who has to go through life without parents and with physical and
psychological toll that the war has left on them. SOS Children’s Villages gives
it’s donors option to donate specifically to Syrian branch and I believe our
shy donation might have a life changing impact on a kid that survives in streets
of Damascus, under constant bombardment.
Hi Rati,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this organization with us. Based on your post and the website, this nonprofit is really amazing to me because it strongly aligns with my core values. In the beginning of the year, I wrote my reflection paper on the belief that every child should be raised in a healthy environment to improve their chances of having a successful future. Based on personal experience, I have witnessed the effects that an unstable or unsupportive upbringing can have on a person’s future. Sadly, most children who do not have a healthy and stable upbringing are never able to overcome the trauma of their past. This hinders them from pursuing their goals or denies them of the resources necessary to fulfill their aspirations. This value is based on the fact that humans are an altricial species and therefore depend on adults to survive. Brain development is so important during the first few years of life as “more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second”. If children lack relationships with adults, where they learn from expressions and gestures, the structure of neurons can be disrupted, which will lead to issues with learning, language, and being able to perform higher cognitive functions. Therefore, this puts orphans and abandoned children at an increased risk of cognitive issues. This leads to problems for their future with trying to maintain relationships or getting jobs. I believe this is extremely unfair to children because they do not choose the environment they grow up in, yet they will be affected by it for the rest of their lives. Therefore, I love the mission of SOS Children’s village because it gives orphans and abandoned children the support system they need to become the person they hope to be. I found the job skills training programs to be especially beneficial for these kids. The video on their website stated that most of these kids are in their situation due to the cycle of poverty they were born into. Therefore, job training programs allow these kids to break free of this cycle and hopefully they will be able to lead a productive, happy life. The program gives children the ability to provide for themselves so they do not have to depend on other people once they become adults.
I really enjoyed your post and learning more about the SOS Children’s Village. I truly love their mission statement and the changes they hope to make for kids who are not given the same opportunities that many of us had growing up. I think growing up in the United States, where this issue is present but is not as prominent, many people take for granted the opportunities and resources presented to them during their childhood. Therefore, I think it is our duty to help kids who are born into unstable environments where they are never even given the chance to become the person they hope to be. I can't wait to hear more about this charity and think it would be a great organization to donate our money to.
Source: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-science-of-ecd/
Rati,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post about SOS Children’s Village. It’s an organization that I don't have much knowledge about, but it’s obvious that they do outstanding work to help protect and care for orphaned children in communities around the world. As I read more about it on the website, I read that there are many various programs to help facilitate a quality life for many children. SOS Children’s Village offers different types of alternative care that they provide for many children. Depending on the individual needs of the child, they have different initiatives, for example, Family-Like Care, Kinship Care, Foster Care, Small Group Homes, Emergency Shelters, and more. I find this to be extremely beneficial for children in need because not every child is the same, and each family has different circumstances. This is a worldview I learned more about in my Human Development. We learned about the socio-cultural development theory which discusses that children are brought up in different cultural contexts and, similar to what Lea expressed in her blog comment, advance their development with the aid of social interaction with older individuals and adults. One theorist Lev Vygostky, conceptualized the Zone of Proximal Development which essentially is the difference between the level of what a child can do independently and what a child’s potential level can reach under the guidance of someone older (Source1). According to his theory, this is super important for the developing child. It is clear that SOS Children’s Villages provides this type of adult support through their alternative programs and on their website they provide a substantial report of guidelines in partnership with the United Nations to ensure quality care.
Additionally, I liked that you related the mission of the organization to current events, such as the bombings in Syria. A lot of news such as this gets paid little attention because it involves a situation that is relatively distant from us. However, I think that this is a very important issue because there are over 50 million children who have been displaced by a number of factors including violence and poverty, while 28 million of these children are refugees fleeing conflict(Source2). Last semester I was in the class Forced Migration and Refugees and we learned a lot about how refugees have to face more than just displacement issues. Because of these war-induced conflicts, many refugees face psychological issues such as anxiety from being in a state of limbo, PTSD, loss of identity and belonging, and other emotional issues. Living in an uncertain future for a child can be very detrimental to their well-being so it seems that SOS Children’s Village works effectively to prevent and solve issues such as these by providing support to these children.
Thanks for bringing this organization to our class discussion. Personally, I believe that helping children is always a great way to utilize any of our resources. I hope the discussion on this post helps our class think about what we would do if we had an additional sum of money to give away, thanks to the Learn By Giving Foundation. Our top 5 organizations each have one aspect in common: they will be utilizing one of our grants to benefit the youth in some way. If we were fortunate enough to receive an extra grant to donate, as a class, we should analyze our core values and the issue areas in Broome County once again and hopefully we can decide which program will help benefit this area’s youth the most.
1: https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/vygotsky-theory/
2: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/world/unicef-report-on-child-refugees-and-migrants/index.html
Hey Rati,
ReplyDeleteThank you for bring attention to an organization that I Personally didn't know about. I really appreciated this blog post because it aligns with something I care deeply about. Children are the future of the world and it isn't fair that some kids have to grow up in a war torn environment with no guidance in their lives. It sounds like this organization is really dedicated to giving children a normal life despite their preexisting circumstances and give them an equal opportunity to grow up into contributing members of society. I appreciate you mentioning how despite it being a big organization, they are very clear with what they are going to do with the money that they are given because often it is not. This post also stood out to me because it really ties hand in hand with tragedies happening all over the world including as you mentioned Syria but also in other countries experiencing human rights disasters like Venezuela among others. To give a child in these places a chance to come out of it a better and successful person is truly amazing. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.