NEW DELHI: To celebrate precious family bonds, SOS Children’s Villages of India, a globally operational not-for-profit organisation, honoured extraordinary family bonds of target beneficiaries towards building capacity of the caregivers, with day-long celebrations across 32 Children’s Villages in India, under Family Strengthening Programme (FSP).
The celebrations were aligned with this year’s theme of The International Day of Families: “Families and inclusive societies”, in advancing Sustainable Development Goal 16 towards promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, leading to sustainable development of countries across the world.
The day started with warm welcome by different chief guest in different villages, followed by events like the lighting the lamp ceremony and welcome song by Bal Panchayat children. Brief introductions of guests were given along with a brief about the International Day of Families theme for 2018 and the role of Family Strengthening Programme in strengthening families and bonds.
The celebrations emphasised that every family is different and also stressed the importance of having healthy and happy family bonding. The special focus was on childhood education and development of parental skills to keep in tune with current scenario and changing environment.
On the special occasion of International Day of Families, Anuja Bansal, Secretary General of SOS Children’s Villages of India said, “SOS Children’s Villages of India understand the potential of parentless and abandoned children or children of vulnerable families, in nation building. With such annual celebrations, we aim to highlight the bonds that SOS families share and the importance of care givers. Our Family Strengthening Programme (FSP) strives to build inclusive societies for sustainable development of the country. The whole idea is to strengthen the families by enabling capacity development of the care givers.”
Designed to prevent children from losing parental care or from being abandoned, the Family Strengthening Programme runs in slums and rural areas, within a 30 km radius of an SOS Children’s Village. The beneficiaries of this programme are children of the most vulnerable lot, that is, children of widows, single women, and Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. Spanning three to five years, the programme aims to enable families to move out of the vicious cycle of poverty towards greater dignity and self-reliance by ensuring education of children and income generating capacity development of the care givers.
