Salvador “Buddy” Ramirez, village director/father, said four of the 12 houses to rise in Golden Heights Subdivision in Mt. View, Mariveles were finished and ready for occupancy.
It was not clear how many children will be welcomed in the initial opening. Kate Mejor, fund-raising assistant of SOS Children’s Village, said each village house can accommodate ten orphaned and abandoned children under the care of an SOS mother.
“SOS Children’s Villages is an international NGO on its 41stth year in the Philippines that provides long-term family-care and education to orphaned, abandoned and neglected children,” Mejor said.
She said the Mariveles village becomes the 8th in the country with the others established in the cities of Lipa, Tacloban, Calbayog, Cebu, Davao, Manila and Iloilo. These villages take care of 962 children.
The association, founded in 1949 by Austrian Hermann Gmeiner, has so far provided to 65,000 children in 132 countries a “unique child-care concept with the vision that a child needs to be rooted in a family for him to achieve his full potential.”
Mejor said that to attain this dream, the children are placed under the care of an SOS mother who remains single and brothers and sisters who share the love of growing together as one family.
“The children are provided with a home that gives them warmth and security and a village that gives them a loving community to prepare them for an independent life and to become righteous individuals in the future,” the SOS official explained.
