SOS Children’s Villages Uganda is a member of SOS Kinderdorf International, a worldwide, independent, non-governmental social development organization that has been working to meet the needs and protect the interests and rights of children since 1949.

We are a locally registered Trust with a local governing body: The Board of Directors. We have been operating since 1989. We currently have projects caring for more than 2,500 children in four locations at Kakiri, Entebbe, Gulu and Fort portal.

The various projects include SOS Children’s Villages, Community outreach programmes, kindergartens, schools, medical centres and social centres.

Our Roots

The first SOS Children’s Village was founded by Hermann Gmeiner in 1949 in Imnst, Austria. He was committed to helping children in need – children who had lost their homes, their security and their families as a result of the Second World War. With the support of many donors and co-workers SOS Children’s Villages was to grow, into now the SOS Kinderdorf International mandated to help children all over the world.

An independent non-governmental social development organisation, SOS Children’s Villages currently works in more than 132 countries and regions across the world, in all, taking action for children. SOS Children’s Villages respects varying religions and cultures, and works in all communities where her mission can contribute to development. SOS Children’s Villages works in the spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and promotes these rights across globally.

In Uganda, the initiatives of SOS-Kinderdorf International started in 1988 with the establishment of the first SOS Children's Village at Kakiri, Wakiso district.

The location was purposely selected in the Luwero Triangle since this region had been particularly badly hit by the war in 1985. At the same location, SOS Children's Villages also established a kindergarten, a primary and secondary school and a medical centre and thereby making a positive contribution to the improvement of the living standard of the neighbourhood. In June 1997, after several years of continued efforts, the "SOS Children's Villages of Uganda Trust", was founded. The SOS Children's Village work in Uganda has been under the patronage of Uganda's First Lady, Mrs. Museveni since 1997.

As the demand for social facilities for children without care continued to rise, not least of all due to the growing Aids pandemic, war and poverty, the second SOS Children's Village was established in Entebbe in 2002.

Then the Northern Uganda war, in its own right, too unleashed its nasty effects on the children and the population in the region: so in June 2002, SOS Children’s Villages Uganda started an SOS emergency relief program in Gulu, in order to provide active assistance to displaced children in the north of the country.

Later in April 2009 construction of a permanent SOS Children’s Village was completed and the SOS families who had lived for more than six years in temporary buildings, moved into their new SOS homes.

While the country struggled to recover from the Northern war, the Ebola scourge in 2008 struck both the North and South Western regions especially in the Rwenzori. Bearing in mind that this region had identical effects with the North due to HIV/ AIDS and the rebel incursion by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), this scourge in claiming household heads increased the impoverished children and left great fright and trauma in the local population. This was in addition to the frequent tremors and land slides of the 1990s, at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains that devastated homes, destroyed crops and animals almost every rainy season.

In a study, SOS Children’s Villages Uganda established that there were very low education levels, drop out rates in the region were so high, and early pregnancies are rampant. Moreover, these very young mothers are unable to properly take care of their children.

In response, SOS Children’s Village Uganda has opened its fourth Village in Fortportal. It was opened in June 2011.