Child Sponsorship Background from Portoviejo, Ecuador

SOS Children's Village Portoviejo

SOS Children's Village Portoviejo is located 5 km from Portoviejo and is situated right on the road between Portoviejo and the seaside resort Crucita.  The area surrounding the SOS Children's Village is also mainly used for agriculture.

SOS Children's Village Portoviejo was built on five hectares of land and has twelve family houses that provide a new home for up to 108 children. It also has a village director's house, an administrative building with offices, a porter's house, a community centre for celebrations and special events, and a house for the "SOS aunts" (SOS Children's Village mothers in training who assist current SOS mothers in their everyday work and stand in for them if they are ill or on holiday).

Other SOS Projects in Portoviejo

The SOS Nursery opened in April 2001. Up to 60 children from both the SOS Children's Village and the neighbourhood can be supervised in the SOS Nurseries three classrooms. The SOS Nursery allows mothers of local children to contribute to the family income by means of paid work, which prevents poverty stricken families from breaking up and children from having to be taken into an SOS Children's Village or a similar social institution.

Since November 2004, an SOS Social Centre also forms part of the SOS Children's Village Portoviejo. The SOS Social Centre is run as a day-care centre and has a capacity of up to 120 children. The day-care centre is particularly valuable to single mothers from the area as it enables them to earn or at least contribute towards earning money for the family, safe in the knowledge that their children are being cared for by trained supervisors. Information events are held on health, balanced diets and other health issues. Supporting women is also a central concern. Further vocational training in a range of manual work is available for women, so as to improve single mothers' qualifications and therefore increase their income and improve their societal status.

Background to Portoviejo

Portoviejo is a city of Ecuador, and the capital the Province of Manabí  30 km from the Pacific coast, with a population of around 250,000. The city was founded in 1535 by the Spanish as "Villa Nueva de San Gregorio de Portoviejo" but it is also known as the city of the "Royal Tamarind  Trees" for the beautiful trees found in the area. Portoviejo is the main political and economical centre of the river Portoviejo valley, which also includes the cantons of Santa Ana and Rocafuerte, where about 110 square kilometres are cultivated every year.