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| SOS President Kutin and the Village Director celebrating the groundbreaking at SOS-Hargeisa |
July 6, 2011:
SOS Children’s Village in Somaliland, a former British protectorate that declared independence from
Somalia in 1991, has been functioning since 2008. On June 29 it was officially inaugurated by SOS Children’s Villages President Helmut Kutin. A groundbreaking ceremony for an SOS elementary school in Hargeisa took place on the same day.
The Children’s Village, the only SOS Village in Somaliland, is located in Hargeisa, a city in Somaliland’s western highlands that is the capital of the break-away region. SOS-Hargeisa provides homes for up to 120 children.
Ensuring Crucial Services for Children and Families
The SOS Social Center and Clinic offer key services for highly needy groups. The SOS Social Center helps three local populations: refugees from war-torn Somalia and the Somali region of Ethiopia, HIV-positive people with families, and war widows. For these groups SOS promotes HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, furnishes children with books and school supplies, provides skills training, and helps families secure loans and equipment needed for income-generating activities.
Through its Medical Center, the most modern clinic in Hargeisa, SOS serves more than 10,000 children and mothers a year. The clinic offers diagnostic services and basic prevention and treatment for common local ailments. While government hospitals supply free anti-retroviral drugs to people with HIV/AIDS, the SOS Clinic treats opportunistic infections. It also provides free child immunizations and pre- and post-natal care.
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| SOS Mothers dancing at the opening ceremony of SOS-Hargeisa |
Somaliland’s President Thanks SOS
At the opening ceremony for SOS-Hargeisa, which is funded by donors and sponsors from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, Somaliland president Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo thanked SOS Children's Villages for its work. He also praised SOS for its renovation of a well-known school in Sheikh, a town 50 miles south of the port of Berbera. “This is a famous school,” said Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo. “I myself was a student there during colonial times and I can truly say this is now one of the best schools in Somaliland.”
The secondary school he referred to was built by the British in 1950. It reopened in 2003 after SOS renovations. Its students come from all parts of Somaliland, as well as from Somalia. They are very poor and many receive SOS scholarships. The school’s reopening was mainly realized by the efforts of Dick and Enid Eyeington, the first principal and his wife, who were tragically murdered in Sheikh in 2003.
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