May 6, 2010: Mother's Day holds special meaning for SOS Children’s Villages. SOS mothers are at the heart of SOS’s model of family-based care for children who can no longer grow up with their biological parents.

SOS moms—local women around the world whom SOS trains to provide warm, loving homes to children in need—form eternal bonds with the children they raise. Like good mothers everywhere, they continue to offer sage motherly advice long after their children have grown into adulthood.

As Mother’s Day approaches, SOS mothers and SOS Children's Villages - USA CEO, Heather Paul, speak out about a mother’s gift of love.

As If They Were My Own

"As a young woman living in West Bengal, India, I was unhappily married and caring for a daughter who was terminally ill. I knew that I needed to transform my life, but I didn’t know how. After my daughter passed away, I stumbled across an ad for a group recruiting mothers for children without parents. I applied and was selected to become an SOS mother. I soon became an SOS mother to a group of children from a region of the country devastated by the flood of 1998. My greatest joy in life is seeing how our children develop. I have taken these children into my heart, as if they were my own."

What She Looked Like Then

As a new SOS mother, Nancy watched with fear as tiny, silent girl named Faith entered the SOS compound. "Oh God, so this is the kind of child who comes to the SOS Village!" she thought. Faith was so ill that to this day Nancy can’t bear to recall what she looked like. "I spent the night with her in my bed. We had to give her medicine. I didn’t sleep a wink because I didn’t think she’d survive the night." An experienced SOS mother stepped in, giving Nancy hope that the child would live. And with Nancy’s constant, tender love, she did. "Today, Faith is intelligent, receptive, and is always laughing. She hopes to be a teacher," says Nancy.

Unconditional Love

SOS USA CEO Heather Paul with her mother and daughter

"Don’t worry, my beauty, whatever you have done, remember that you can always come home." That’s what Heather’s maternal grandmother, resident of a small Cornish fishing village in England, would say to her daughter—Heather’s Mom—when she was in need of advice and a hug. Says Heather, "Today, with three generations of her own children to care for, Mother still lives by Granny Williams’ advice. Because she knows that failures and disappointments affect all families. But even in the worst of times, Mother’s remedy was always unconditional love. Unconditional love enables children to start again, to believe there is hope and people who believe in them for who they are."

Share your own mother stories with SOS on Twitter or Facebook.  You can even honor your mother as well as SOS Mothers around the world through a special gift from the SOS Gifts of Love catalog.