SOS Children in Angola
The Republic of Angola is on the south-western coast of Africa, bordered to the south by Namibia, to the east by Zambia, and to the north by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). With its breathtaking scenery and white-washed beaches, it is one of Africa's most beautiful countries and with its vast reserves of diamonds, potentially one of the wealthiest. But most of its 17 million people live in grinding poverty as a result of a 27-year civil war that finally ended in 2002.
Over a million people were killed roughly four million made homeless, the majority of them children. Hospitals and schools were destroyed and today less than 20% of children have access to secondary education. The level of malnutrition is “the worst seen in Africa in the past decade” according to Médicins Sans Frontières, and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world.
SOS Children began its work in Angola in 1994 with the construction of an SOS Children's community in the southern town of Lubango, and we also set up a wide-reaching vaccination programme against meningitis, an illness from which hundreds of children were dying. This was the first of a number of SOS emergency relief programmes in Angola.
SOS Children’s Village Lubango has 13 family houses which are home to 130 children. The village also has a nursery school, a primary school, a clinic, an outreach programme to help prevent family collapse and child abandonment in the community, and a small farm. There is enough water to provide irrigation at a relatively low cost and provide over 50 per cent of the village’s needs. Poultry and rabbit projects have been added subsequently. Like all SOS Children's Villages, the nursery school, school and clinic are open to local people and over 900 patients are treated by the clinic every year. With many state-run schools and hospitals still closed due to the recent war, these projects provide facilities for the wider community that are otherwise not available.
In 2001 an SOS Community Development Centre (outreach programme) was established in the town of Benguela on Angola’s west coast, and its community aid programmes helped a local orphanage in the desert where 150 refugee children lived without electricity or water, and we helped to dig a borehole. Today, the outreach programme offers support to vulnerable families in the community, many of whom have been affected by HIV / AIDS, and offers business training for guardians, among other things, until the family is financially able to support itself.
A new SOS Children's Village in Benguela was completed in 2005. There are 12 permanent family homes for 100 orphaned and abandoned children, many of them war orphans.
There is also an SOS Nursery School for 100 children and an SOS Primary School for nearly 500 children. In addition there is an SOS Medical Centre.
A third Children’s Village is currently being constructed in Huambo and an outreach programme for families affected by HIV / AIDS will begin here soon.
At present we support over 3,300 people in Angola through two SOS Children’s Villages, one SOS Youth Home, two SOS Nursery Schools, two SOS Primary Schools, one SOS Vocational Training Centre, two SOS outreach programmes (Family Strengthening Programmes) and two SOS Medical Centres.
There is also information on the Aids Orphan Projects in Angola, Africa.
Local Contact
Aldeia de Crianças SOS Angola (associated)
Caixa Postal 332
Lubango/ Angola
Tel: +244/2612 45101
Fax +244/261 245101
e-mail: afonsocastro@nexus.ao
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