February 15 2008
SOS Children's Village Davao in the Philippines is the best NGO in the region
15/02/2008 - At the end of January, the Department of Social Welfare and Development of the Philippines in Davao declared that SOS Children's Village Davao was the best non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the region.
SOS mother Teresa Tuble and village director Luis Sera accepted the award in a ceremony in Davao City. An assessment was carried out on all the NGOs in the region of Davao on Mindanao Island in the south-east of the Philippines, and SOS Children's Villages' educational concept for childcare came out on top!
SOS Children's Village Davao is home to 14 families with a total of 181 children and is SOS Children's Villages' largest facility in the Philippines, dating back more than 20 years. In the same location, there is an SOS Hermann Gmeiner School and an SOS Social Centre with a nursery and small medical ward. Last year, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of SOS Children's Villages Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo personally paid tribute to the organisation for its commitment to out-of-home care.
Evangeline Orosco is one of the children that has grown up at an SOS Children's Village in the Philippines over the past decades. Evangeline is now an adult and works as a doctor, but when she arrived at SOS Children's Village Davao at the age of eleven, things looked different: "I could have never imagined that I would graduate with a degree in medicine and that I would become a doctor!", she recalls.
Since the SOS Children's Villages Philippines National Association was set up four decades ago, 24 projects have been implemented; just a week ago the cornerstone of the eighth SOS Children's Village in the country was laid.