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| Kindergarten Class in SOS Sri Lanka - Photo by Katja Snozzi |
January 18, 2011: Eighty unaccompanied children under the care of SOS Children’s Villages since the end of
Sri Lanka’s civil war in May 2009 have been moved with their caregivers to the northern town of Jaffna. SOS has rented two houses in the port town at the northern tip of the country, where the children will live until the new SOS Children’s Villages at Jaffna is built.
At a January 3 press conference in Sri Lanka, SOS Children’s Villages President Helmut Kutin expressed confidence that construction of the new SOS Children’s Village in Jaffna would start as early as this year. SOS, in Sri Lanka since 1980, currently operates five Children’s Villages there.
The children, who have no families to care for them, had been living in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near the northern town of Vavuniya. Together with 120 other children and youth who have since been reunited with their families, the group of 80 was under the care of SOS at the refugee camp. Their move to Jaffna, in the first week of December 2010, was prompted by the authorities’ closing of the temporary camp near Vavuniya.
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| SOS Villages in Sri Lanka |
Sri Lanka’s Civil War Left Thousands Homeless
Sri Lanka, a tropical island southeast of India’s southern tip, has been wracked by a quarter century of violence between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels. The Tamils are an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka. The northeastern part of the country was the epicenter of the civil war, which by its end in 2009 left hundreds of thousands of people in huge IDP camps.
SOS Children’s Villages opened a temporary care program in part of the IDP camp in Cheddikulem, near Vavuniya, in August 2009. It wasn’t until December 2010 that SOS was able to begin its activities in Jaffna.
In Jaffna, the planned SOS Children’s Village will create permanent homes for the 80 children as well as 60 other child war victims. SOS-Jaffna will also operate support programs for other vulnerable families and their children.
Giving Hope to Young, Hapless War Victims
SOS Children’s Villages in Sri Lanka currently supports about 6,700 children by providing them
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| Sri Lankan children - Photo by Sebastian Posingis |
with family-based care, education, and health care.
Through its social center in Batticaloa, located in the troubled northeast of the country, SOS has been strengthening families since 2003. After the tsunami of December 2004, SOS provided immediate emergency relief and helped rebuild homes in affected areas.
Children don’t start wars but they suffer their terrible consequences. Sponsor an SOS boy or girl to provide a child in need with meals, clothing, shelter, medical care and an education.
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