An Alternative to Orphanages?

Rural Swaziland

Centre d'Accueil, Bamako

I have visited over a dozen different “orphanages” by now in Mali, Ethiopia, D.R. Congo, and Uganda, seen rural orphanhood in Swaziland, and no matter how impressed I may be with a specific place I am always left with the same pervasive feeling: There must be a better way. What is the best way to care for orphans and vulnerable children who have been left on their own?  Placing children in local adoptive families is ideal, but where are all the parents who are willing to adopt?

By 2010, sub-Saharan Africa will be home to approximately 50 million orphaned children.  Although the number of orphans is slowly decreasing in Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, it is drastically increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa.  About a third of these children are orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Orphan villages seem to be all the rage these days, in an attempt to provide more individualized care to children.  See: SOS Villages, Rafiki Villages, Restoration Gateway, and New Hope Uganda.

The concept of an SOS Village began in 1949 with the vision of an Austrian man named Hermann Gmeiner.  Gmeiner started the first village for children in Imst, Austria to help those who lost their homes, security, and families as a result of World War II.  Today, there are over 450 SOS Villages serving 132 countries and territories.

SOS Villages are based on four fundamental principles that Gmeiner believed every child requires: a mother, brothers and sisters, a house, and a village.  Children are placed together in families with up to ten children, a “mother”, and an “aunt”, all in a house that is modeled after the middle-class lifestyle of the country in which it is located.  The houses are constructed adjacent to one another, creating a small village that becomes a part of its wider surrounding residential area so that children can become integrated into community life outside the SOS Village.

Another organization I have been struck by here in Uganda is Dwelling Places, which works to rehabilitate and restore street children.  They actually work not just to care for the child but for the child’s parents and family for the cases in which a family exists.  If a child’s family member can be found, the potential for reconciliation with the family is researched and parents are provided with counseling and income-generating possibilities to better equip them to care for their children.  Once the family has been empowered to provide a safe and loving environment, the child can be resettled back into their family.

Better solution?  Maybe.  I don’t have any answers, but I will keep searching.  I do know that every child has infinite potential if given the right opportunities, but because of the failure to see the image of God within each one of us, people have become the most wasted resource on this planet.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” Isaiah 49:15-16

SOS Village Sanankoroba, Mali

Addis Ababa Foster Home

Don Bosco, Goma, D.R.C.