SOS Kinderdorf Children’s Village, Kotayk, Kotayk Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

In February last year, as part of my ongoing work on children in institutions or deprived of appropriate parental care, I wrote an article and produced a photo story on the work of SOS Kinderdorf in Armenia. The article was just one of many that have dealt with the issue of poverty and abandonment in both Georgia and Armenia.

[…] SOS Kinderdorf has into the largest organization dealing with orphans and children deprived of parental care in the world. The Hermann Gmeiner Foundation, as well as individual donors, funds the organization’s activities. There are currently over 60,000 children living in 450 villages operating in 132 countries. An additional 500,000 children receive support through kindergartens, schools and youth centers.

[…]

Regardless of it’s size and success, however, what makes SOS Kinderdorf different from other organizations dealing with children deprived of parental care is in its approach. Although many Diasporan-based organizations have sought to support institutions for abandoned children, a new government policy aimed at removing children from residential care in Armenia instead seeks to promote alternatives.

“The main thing that makes us different from State orphanages is that we provide long term family-based care,” says Ashot Kocharyan, National Director for SOS Children‘s Villages in Armenia. “When I say long-term, I mean in terms of our commitment to the care and upbringing of our children. We don’t stop when they reach the age of 18, but continue up until the age of 22 and sometimes 24.”

Anyway, more than a year later I discovered that the article caught the attention of SOS Kinderdorf’s headquarters and was actually sent out to all of its worldwide offices as an example of how best to represent the work of the organization through the mass media. In particular, the organization was happy to see that the article was both positive and negative and covered both the successes and failures of the programme in Armenia.

What this also meant was that when Katerina Ilevska, one of SOS Kinderdorf’s outreach coordinators, arrived in Yerevan last week after visiting Azerbaijan and Georgia, I took the opportunity to pay a return visit to the SOS Children’s Village in Kotayk and one of its Youth Facilities in Yerevan. Didn’t take many pictures as it was interesting to sit in on Katerina’s meetings and interviews instead. However, I did take some.

SOS Kinderdorf Children’s Village, Kotayk, Kotayk Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

SOS Kinderdorf Youth Facility, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007