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Preeti Mehra

Next week will be the award ceremony in New York where SOS Children's Villages (SOS CV) will receive the 2002 Conrad N Hilton Humanitarian Prize of $one million. The organisation has decided to invest the prize money in pilot projects for children welfare in various parts of the world, especially for the children whose families are suffering the consequences of being HIV Positive and HIV Positive children who are at the risk of being abandoned.

How much will the 40-year-old SOS CV of India get and more important, how will it impact its work? Jagan Nath Kaul, the president of the establishment, is non-committal on the first question and says that the decision lies with the international body. Nevertheless for India, the organisation's outreach programmes are of utmost importance. Kaul outlines the four programmes in the pipeline towards which, he hopes, every Indian will contribute.

The 23 SOS villages around the country have in their neighbourhood a large number of girls and boys whose families live below the poverty line. SOS would like to reach out to them and give them for a few hours a day their lost childhood, specially a good meal, enjoyable playtime and functional literacy.

The second programme would be to assist single, struggling mothers to bring up their children. "Strengthening motherhood ensures that poverty does not become a reason for the child to be separated from its mother," says Kaul. In a third programme, SOS would like to reach out to the mentally challenged and the fourth would be an integrated primary education programme.

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