Children's Organizations

SOS Villages

  • SOS Village is a chain organization with sites across South Africa. This organization successfully attempts to create a permanent family environment for orphans or children with parents who are incapable of taking care of them properly. Children are accepted into the program depending on need not based on gender, race, or ethnicity. Within a fifteen house village, eight to ten boys and girls will live in a house with their selected 'mother'. The SOS Village strives to prepare its children for an independant, successful life.

Mandela's Children's Fund


  • Nelson Mandela sponsored the creation of this page five years ago to expedite the aid to the many children in South Africa in need. This page cites a variety of programs including quality child health-care, education, as well as aiding of children with disability. This organization stresses the importance of South Africa as a community getting involved and helping the children in need. The Mandela Children's Fund is also an international organization that aids children in need in nations around the world.

  • African Health Foundation


    • The African Health Foundation [AHEF] is an organization dedicated to the promotion of health, the control of the growing population as well as improving the status of women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. It is an organization that works with organizations based in communities to complete activities within the involved communities. The activities of African Health Foundation [AHEF] are categorized into programs that include Reproductive Health & Population Control, Environmental and Child Health, Gender and Development as well as Research and Training.
    • The Love of Christ Ministries

    • This privately established organization tries to re-create a family and home environment for abandoned children to grow up in. The "farm" on which the children live is a community with volunteer helpers as well as permanent figures in the orphans or abandoned children's lives. It is similar to the SOS Village organization.

    • This organization in South Africa caters to the rescuing abandoned babies as well as caring for them. Berea Baptist Mission Church owns a property in the inner city of Johannesburg,in South Africa. This property contains two buildings and a few outhouses. In order to facilitate the rescue of abandoned infants, in August 1999 they installed a "hole in the wall" or "baby bin" in the wall of the Mission Church, where babies can be placed 24 hours a day. Once the baby is in the bin, it is retrieved by a staff member and cared for until a they can be placed in a better environment.
    International Organizations

    • There are a number of international organizations that are not based in South Africa, but work to provide aid to the many desperate South African children. The Children's Fund and the United Nations Children's Fund are two of the many international organizations.

    Health Street Children Orphans Education Violence Children in South Africa

    This page was created by Kylie Anderson, Stacy Diavolitsis and Matt Frankel for a Children & Society course at Tulane University. This course is taught by Professor April Brayfield. The purpose of our webpage is to describe the lives of children in South Africa. Information about children's lives in other countries is available at the Childhood Around the World homepage.

    Last Updated: December 16, 2000