The sixth Finnish SOS Children’s Village was opened in September 2012 in Tampere, 170 kilometres north of Helsinki. The SOS Children’s Village Tampere is located in a completely new residential area called Vuores around 15 kilometres from the city centre of Tampere.
This SOS Children’s Village is the first new kind of urban SOS Children’s Village in Finland. Each SOS family lives independently and integrates into the respective surrounding environment, but can at any time fall back on a team of education specialists, social workers and therapists. The purpose of the integrated SOS Children’s Village is that children will thus not be stigmatized – their family is like any other family in spite of being a foster family. Children are also able to live close to their relatives and other social networks.
There is also a Social Centre called ‘SOStari’ that is supporting SOS families but also other families in the area. As the third biggest city of Finland Tampere has a lot to offer in terms of education and leisure activities.