What we do

World Villages for Children provides financial support to the charity programmes of the Sisters of Mary.

Thanks to our supporters, the Sisters of Mary provide food, care and education for more than 20,000 children in six countries. Through no fault of their own, these children have fallen victim to circumstances that have far-reaching consequences for their education and living environment. Some examples of these circumstances could be the loss of one or both of their parents, sickness, extreme poverty and hunger.

In our Villages – also referred to as Boystowns and Girlstowns – the Sisters of Mary provide our children with a fully accredited in-house education programme from kindergarten to high school, with the majority of our programmes focused on middle school and high school. Our high school students also receive vocational training. As a result of this training, graduates have been very successful in securing jobs after completing their education.

To enable them to become independent adults and break free from all physical and emotional scars of their former life of living in poverty, the children are encouraged to participate in sports and artistic activities.

To date, World Villages for Children has helped more than 150,000 children and their families break free from a life of poverty. Learn more about who we help below.

In Guatemala, Korea and Brazil, the Sisters of Mary also run medical clinics and hospitals where they care for sick people and children who are too poor to have access to urgently needed medical care.

Who we help

Our programmes support only the poorest children and places are granted to deserving children at our Boystowns and Girstowns based on two primary criterion:

• the economic situation of the child's family: only those families whose situation is truly dire are eligible.
• the child has some background education which will allow them to take full advantage of the education we offer.

Through the Bishops of the countries where they operate, the Sisters of Mary are alerted to the needs of specific families and regularly visit neighbouring parishes to find more children, and travel extensively throughout each country to recruit children they feel will benefit the most from our assistance.