02/23/09 - During her first foreign tour as Secretary of State in mid-February, Hillary Clinton spent two days in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Reaching out to the globe's third largest democracy, Clinton noted that Indonesia demonstrates that Islam and democracy can co-exist. Clinton and Indonesia's foreign minister discussed bilateral cooperation in many areas, including education and health. Secretary Clinton announced that the United States and Indonesia will begin negotiations to permit the Peace Corps to resume working in the country after an absence of more than four decades. Violence leading to a military coup in 1965 forced Peace Corps volunteers to leave Indonesia in 1965.

SOS Children's Villages in Indonesia

A child at the SOS Children's Village in Meulaboh, Indonesia

Seven years into the military rule of General Suharto, in 1972, SOS Children's Villages — the world's largest charity focused on providing loving homes for orphaned and abandoned children — opened its first Indonesia children's village. SOS now operates eight villages across the Indonesian archipelago. The organization was founded in 1949 by Austrian Hermann Gmeiner. Besides caring for children and youth, SOS Children's Villages conducts family strengthening programs so that children at risk can stay in the caring environment of their own biological family.

Emergency Aid Leads to New SOS Villages

Children playing at the SOS Children's Village in Medan, Indonesia.

SOS Children's Villages also provides shelter and aid for Indonesians in need during natural disasters. SOS had no facilities on the Indonesian island of Sumatra when the terrible tsunami of December 2004 struck, killing up to 70 percent of the rural population along the island's coast. An estimated 150,000 children were orphaned by the tragedy. SOS rushed in with emergency relief for traumatized children and homeless families. It constructed hundreds of homes, and opened a village clinic in an area that lacked any medical care.

Thanks to an influx of post-tsunami donations, SOS was able to open three permanent children's villages on Sumatra — in Banda Aceh, Meulaboh, and Medan. These villages provide homes for children who lost their parents in the tsunami. In Indonesia, SOS also runs five SOS youth facilities, eight SOS kindergartens, one SOS Hermann Gmeiner school, two vocational training centers, and nine SOS social centers.

If you would like to help a child in Indonesia secure a warm home and a bright future, consider sponsoring a child.