Children's paintings from the SOS nursery school in Wienerwald, Austria.…
To go with this lovely painting I want to tell you about a project called "Tracking Footprints" - which is a study on lives of former SOS children. It raises the question of how you measure the success of our work. Here is the study:
- Lisa
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Children's paintings from the SOS nursery school in Wienerwald, Austria.
To go with this lovely painting I want to tell you about a project called "Tracking Footprints" - which is a study on lives of former SOS children. It raises the question of how you measure the success of our work. Here is the study:
Measuring success are a natural part of the working processes. But what does evaluation look like in the case of SOS Children's Villages, i.e. in the case of care for children and adolescents? Is it possible to "measure the success of work" here as well? A recent study deals with these questions.
The aim of this research project is to follow the courses of the lives of former SOS children all over the world. It aims at obtaining information on the way in which these young people, who spent their childhood and young adulthood receiving care from SOS Children's Villages.
During the last couple of months we have established relationships with co-workers of local SOS Children's Villages who are all willing to us with our study.
What is particularly important in this study is the context in which the children have grown up, so that the children's histories can be compared fairly between countries. This means that against the background of a country with a poor economy and high rates of unemployment, unemployment is to be assessed differently than in a country with high employment.
Running parallel with this we read studies that a few countries had conducted on these topics. These documents provided useful information for the development of the research questions.
From this preliminary work we divided the study into three subject areas: the present living situation of the adolescents, their experiences after leaving the care of SOS Children and their development during their stay at the SOS Children's Village. The methods include multiple-choice questions, as well as structured and open interviews.
The first group of young adults to take part where taken care of in Kenya, after that the tool will be applied in five to seven countries: Local co-workers will be responsible for the multiple-choice questions and the structured interviews. The open, semi-structured interviews will be directly conducted by the project team. The results of these first inquiries will be used for further examination of the practicability and possible fine-tuning of the tool.
- Mary
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The food prepared by a young girl selling them at a charity fair at the Social Center in Keila, Estonia.
This year's charity fair was held in the SOS School Keila, Estonia, the guests had a chance to buy magic drinks and all they would need for celebrating Easter.
A slight change in the marketing brought the record income for the annual charity fair in the SOS School in Keila, Estonia.
The organisers shifted the start of the charity fair from the daytime to the evening, so that the parents of the schoolchildren could join the fair to have a look at their children selling skills and to buy a small Easter gift.
The move was justified - at the end of the day the income was 3,963 Estonian kroons, which was donated to the local Keila Youth Centre.
15 companies founded by the school children for that purpose sold their self-made stuff: everything connected with Easter (rabbits, decorated eggs etc), cakes, sandwiches, cards, decorated bottles, necklaces, juice, tea, and magic drinks.
"One of the peculiarities of this year's fair was the selling skills - advertising and giving an extra value for the goods," said the managing director of the school. "The magic drink is a perfect example how the regular raspberry tea was marketed as a drink which is enriched with magic words."
The SOS School organised the charity fair for the fourth year in a row, first time they donated the money (approx. 50 Euro) to Keila Hospital for drawing supplies, the second year the money (approx. 100 Euro) was donated to the Orphanage Centre in Tallinn. Last year's collected money (approx. 130 Euro) was donated to SOS Children's Village Kutaisi, Georgia, and a local medical centre.
"Our school is working thanks to supporters from outside Estonia and we have decided to try to help somebody ourselves. This year we managed to collect twice as much money as last year," Sirje Raagmets, the headmaster of the school explained the reason for organising the charity fair.
SOS School Keila currently takes in 90 children, most of these are from the community outside SOS Children's Village Keila.
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