SOS Children in Angola
The Republic of Angola is on the coast of south-west Africa, bordered to the south by Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the east and north. With its breathtaking scenery and white-washed beaches, it is one of Africa's most beautiful countries and with its vast reserves of diamonds, potentially one of the wealthiest. But most of its 13 million people live in grinding poverty as a result of over 25 years of civil war that finally ended in 2002.
Over a million people were killed and millions more made homeless, the majority of them children. Hospitals and schools were destroyed and today less than 50 per cent of Angolan children have access to education. The level of malnutrition is “the worst seen in Africa in the past decade” according to Médicins Sans Frontières, and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world.
SOS Children began its work in Angola in 1994 with the construction of an SOS Children's community in the capital, Lubango, and a wide-reaching vaccination programme against meningitis from which hundreds of children were dying. This was the first of a number of SOS emergency relief programmes, providing food and medical aid, many of which are still in place today.
SOS Lubango has twelve family houses which are home to 120 children. The village also has a kindergarten, a primary school, a clinic and a small farm. There is enough water to provide irrigation at a relatively low cost and provide over 50 per cent of the village’s needs. Poultry and rabbit projects have been added subsequently. Like all SOS Children's Villages, the kindergarten, school and clinic are open to local people and over 500 patients are treated by the clinic every month. With many state-run schools and hospitals closed because of the political situation, these projects provide care for the wider community that otherwise is not available.
In 2001 an SOS Social Centre was established in the town of Benguela on Angola’s west coast and its community aid programmes helped a local orphanage in the desert where 150 refugee children live without electricity or water, and work has begun on digging a borehole. A new SOS Children's Village in Benguela, together with a kindergarten, primary school and medical centre was completed in 2004. There are 12 family homes for 120 orphaned and abandoned children. and is a permanent home for over 100 children, many of them war orphans.
There is also an SOS Nursery School for 100 children in four classes and an SOS Primary School for nearly 500 children in twelve classes. In addition there is an SOS Medical Centre which treats 500 patients each month, including space for 20 in-patients.
Since 2005, the emergency relief programmes in Lubango and Benguela were gradually changed into family strengthening programmes with the aim of preventing children from being abandoned and to strengthening their families' ability to care for them.
See also Aids Orphan Projects in Angola, Africa
Local Contact
Aldeia de Crianças SOS Angola (associated)
Caixa Postal 1035
Lubango/ Angola
Tel: +244/61/23 896
Fax: +244/61/23 898
e-mail: soslubango@netangola.com
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