10 March 2011

BEIRUT: Around many neatly tended corners in the mountain village of Kfarhay is a swing set or a slide. This is not because the residents are unusually fun-loving, but because the most important ones are under the age of 14. Welcome to SOS Children’s Village Kfarhay, one of four communities in the country run by the Lebanese Association of SOS Children’s Villages.

The first SOS Children’s Village was founded in 1949 in Imst, Austria, by Hermann Gmeiner, with the objective of providing family-based attention to children who lack parental care. Since 1949, the organization has expanded to include 423 villages in 123 countries.

Lebanon’s first SOS village was established in 1969, in Bhersaf in the Metn. In 1981 a village in Sferai opened, followed by Kfarhay in 1995. The newest village in Ksarnaba in the Bekaa got its start in 2006. Some 280 children currently live in these villages.

Kids live in houses headed by Lebanese “mothers,” with other children who become their brothers and sisters. Education and medical care are provided by SOS, and around the age of 14 or 15 the kids move to one of seven “youth houses” where they learn to become more self-sufficient.

Eventually SOS helps its charges find jobs and pays for university – it provides for the children until they are fully independent.

Children come to the SOS villages from a variety of backgrounds. Some are orphans, while others have a parent unable to provide for them.

Other children have been abandoned or removed from dangerous home situations. Admission is done on a case-by-case basis, says SOS Lebanon’s deputy national director Lina Sarkis, who notes that SOS “never turns away orphans.”

Miriam, a 13-year-old resident of Kfarhay, says “I lived with my mom, and after she died I lived with my sister for one year,” before coming to Kfarhay, where she has been for six years. She adds that she would like to be an architect someday.

Another young resident and hopeful future doctor, Christine, 14, says that her parents “had a problem” and so she came to SOS. She has been living at Kfarhay for seven years.

While SOS is an international organization, Wilfried Vyzlozil, the general director of the Hermann Gmeiner Fund, stresses that it is not a European missionary operation and strives to adapt to local circumstances.

SOS’ Family Strengthening Program, which reaches out to parents who are having trouble caring for their children, was established in Lebanon during the Civil War.

Sarkis says the program was a direct result of the war as there were many widowed women who needed help caring for their children. Lebanon has two Family Strengthening centers, one in Beirut and one in the Bekaa.

This scheme emphasizes practicality, says Sarkis. It aims to help women with children support themselves.

“In the Bekaa, one woman said she wanted a cow because that is how she knew how to [generate an income.] So we bought her a cow.” According to SOS literature, 2,500 children and caregivers in Lebanon are supported by this program in one way or another.

Vyzlozil says that “[the Family Strengthening Program] was a pioneering dimension of SOS for the whole world. It was created here, and it evolved and was taken up in other emergency situations like Sarajevo in 1995.”

“Mothers” are an integral dimension of the SOS program. In Lebanon, they must be single and not have children of their own, although they may be divorced and have adult children.

To adapt to local sensibilities, SOS Lebanon houses Muslim children with Muslim mothers, and Christian children with Christian mothers, although Sarkis says aside from housing there is no religious separation in village life: “they live together and play together.” Each house has a maximum of nine children.

Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the state of the art facilities at Kfarhay, funding is a challenge for SOS, particularly in Lebanon. The Ministry of Social Affairs contributes LL 4,000 per day for each child in care institutions – but as Sarkis points out, this money is only provided if a child is Lebanese and has an identity card.

“If you are born out of wedlock,” she says, “you don’t have an identity card. If you are abandoned, you don’t have an identity card.”

And if you are not Lebanese, as is the case with some of the children, you certainly don’t have an identity card.

Vyzlozil reports that funding comes from a variety of sources, including individuals, corporate partners, the EU, and legacies. But Helmut Kutin, the president of SOS International for 26 years, told The Daily Star on his visit to Lebanon last week that “for over 30 years now the majority of financial needs have been provided by [Europe] and therefore it is high time that the Lebanese people make a move [to contribute funding.]”

The first SOS village in the Middle East opened in Bethlehem in 1966, and now there are 13, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere. In the ‘90s, there were moves toward establishing a village in Iraq, but Saddam Hussein was not keen on the idea, says Vyzlozil.

SOS Lebanon boasts that it is the first SOS organization in the region, having been founded in 1964, and it seems to be here to stay. When The Daily Star visited Kfarhay, children and mothers alike were busy preparing festivities in honor of Kutin’s visit, as some younger kids enjoyed a spin on the merry-go-round with their adopted siblings.

Said Kutin: “Lebanon has always been a little mixture, so we blended right into the society … [and] once the need is there, we stay.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.