| The Dominican SOS Children’s Villages were founded on September
25 1979, when a group of eleven Dominicans who were worried after the results
of hurricanes David and Federico, who rapidly responded the call of the
former First Lady of the Republic, Mrs. Renée Klang de Guzmán,
and the Austrian Consul Mr. Juan Ostreicher, to build a non profit society
that would serve to “Achieve a social entity and lay the foundation
of the SOS children’s Villages in our country, to care for abandoned
children and youth by group in communities similar to families”.
The founder was Mr. Hermann Gmeiner, Austrian, who became an orphan of
a mother when he was very young. He felt the need of protecting orphaned
and abandoned children who were straying the streets of Europe after the
Second World War. Today there are over 1,539 SOS institutions in 131 countries
worldwide. |