SOS Children’s Village directors to discuss beneficiaries’ future, employment

AMMAN — Experts from eight MENA countries are scheduled to convene in Amman later this month to discuss crucial issues related to children without parental care, mainly their employability and ways to empower them during their adult years. 

The annual “National Directors Meeting of SOS Children’s Villages across MENA”, slated to be held on December 12, will offer an opportunity for countries to share their knowledge and expertise in ways to provide care and support for SOS beneficiaries, with a focus on youths when they enter the labour market and lead their lives outside the villages, a challenge shared by many countries in the area. 

“Choosing Jordan to host the event for the first time is a vote of confidence. It is a way of acknowledging that we are on the right track when it comes to providing quality services to our children,” Reem Habayeb, chairperson of SOS Jordan, said on Tuesday. 

At a media briefing, she added that empowering young people and making sure they remain in the labour market after leaving the SOS is a “huge challenge”, especially due to the “culture of dependence prevailing” in the young generation. 

“They can simply quit their jobs if the salary or transportation is not up to their aspirations. We need to empower them to become productive and independent individuals,” Habayeb said. 

With currently 300 children benefiting from the SOS’s foster care services, SOS Jordan Director Muna Hamdan said school dropouts are also a phenomenon among children who sometimes find it difficult to face society when knowing about their situation. 

“Securing a family for each child was and will remain our ultimate goal. We have succeeded in entrenching a very strong sense of belonging among our children in their alternative families, and now we are focusing on their integration into society,” she highlighted. 

The upcoming four-day event will also provide a platform for participants to review new foster care trends, protection policies and sustainability.  

With the first SOS village established in Amman in 1987, the village operates on a family-based model through the support of village mothers, aunts, brothers and sisters who have regular family gatherings. 

The children, enrolled in public and private schools through Al Aman Fund for the Future of Orphans, are divided into 12 houses located in Amman and the northern governorate of Irbid, each with its own mother and acting as a family unit. 

A third village is located in Aqaba, 330km south of Amman, consisting of nine homes.  

The SOS also operates youth homes where girls and boys are separated at the age of 14. 

“Even after leaving the village at the age of 18, we continue to provide them with the needed financial and psychological support…it is an umbilical cord that is never cut,” said Habayeb.