Interim Care Centre Opened in Tartous, Syria
SOS Children’s Villages Syria has opened a new Interim Care Centre (ICC) in Tartous for 450 unaccompanied and separated children, as well as those who have lost parental care.
The Tartous centre will help address important care-related needs for children in the coastal region that hosts large numbers of people displaced by Syria’s six-year war. Scheduled to operate for three years, the centre provides safe shelter, psychological care, educational activities, medical care and entertainment. Specialists will also be on hand to help children reunify with their families.
“The war took everything from our children,” Samar Daboul, President of SOS Children’s Villages Syria Board of Directors, said during the inauguration of the centre. “Many of them lost their homes, families and hopes. We believe that opening this and other interim care centres and child friendly spaces will mitigate the impact of the war and help these children regain their childhood.”
An inauguration ceremony took place on 27 August. The ICC and the assistance it provides in protecting the rights of unaccompanied and separated children are made available through SOS Belgium program initiatives and European Union financing.
SOS Syria also operates a Child Friendly Space in Tartous, offering activities for more than 350 children, and works with the UN children’s agency UNICEF to provide courses and educational support for 1,100 children.
Background
SOS Children’s Villages opened its first village in Damascus in 1981, and a second Damascus village that is about to be inaugurated will have a capacity of 80 children. The Aleppo village, which opened in 1998, was evacuated in 2012 and all the children were transferred to Damascus.
SOS Children’s Villages emergency response programs are located in Aleppo, Damascus, as well as Tartous. SOS staff have provided child friendly spaces, interim care, medical referrals, educational support and humanitarian assistance throughout much of Syria’s ongoing civil war.