Sponsor's Letter Oct 2007
29/10/2007
Please find a sponsor's update written by the Children’s Village below. As English is not the first language in Georgia, please bear in mind that the English in this report is not perfect.
Hope for a better life
Regarding the general situation of our country, although solid steps have been made towards the realization of a real democratic system, the precarious economic resources of the major part of our population is a daily fact, as well as the presence of wide extreme poverty sectors all over Georgia. The unemployment rate is dramatically going up, and the salaries earned by most part of the productive sector are generally insufficient to satisfy the needs of a regular family. Once again the economic situation is one of the main causes of family break ups, social disturbances, frequently deriving in more mistreated, abused or abandoned children. Consequently we badly need to count on good hearted people like you to help us alleviate the suffering of so many innocent children victims of social, economic and political failures.
Sponsored Children rooted in a family
SOS Children’s Village Kutaisi was opened in 2002, the first children were sisters Tinatin and Sifio Meparidze. They entered the Village on the 9 of October 2002 and this day is celebrated traditionally as the Birthday of the SOS Children’s Village Kutaisi. Nowadays there are 12 families in the SOS Village that counts 83 children: 39 girls and 44 boys, of whom 76 are schoolchildren, and 7 attend Nursery School. As one of the main aim of SOS Children is to give abandoned children a new family SOS Children Kutaisi does its best to do this. Out-of-home care can often be avoided, however, through a preventive approach designed to strengthen families at risk- especially as a result of poverty, lack of education or discrimination, in such cases SOS Children helps by providing homes, families full of love and warmth or counseling, youth work, children care services. We want to prevent families from breaking up, so children can stay in their biological families, if this is the best thing for the children.
SOS Children offers a long term care to the abandoned children with a motto “Children’s independent and autonomous”, the next stage after the SOS Village is our SOS Youth Home, where children move in the age of 14. Teenagers from SOS Children’s Village Kutaisi now live at the SOS Youth Home in Kutaisi. The personal meetings and talks are held with adults that cover the general information about the youth home lifestyle, regulation and rights. The lessons on group communication, team building and practical skills take place that the teenagers listen and take with great interest.
SOS Nursery School
SOS Children supports a local kindergarten, Muxnari, that cares for the wellbeing and free development of 150 children aged 3 to 6. Of these 7 children are from the Children’s Village, the rest being children of the refugees and the young and materially insecure families living nearby. There are 9 groups or classes in the Nursery School. Beautiful toys, comfortable surrounding, the warm and tender atmosphere are the reasons why the children are impatiently looking for every new morning and willingly come to the place where the educators’ care, attention and love awaits them.
Relevant Countries: Georgia.