SOS Malta is inevitably associated in people's minds with appeals for help after natural disasters and the outbreak of wars around the world.
This is because the NGO was first founded in 1991 to provide humanitarian aid to poverty-stricken Albanians who had fled the Kosovo conflict. After various appeals for help at national level, it became clear that a more structured and sustainable approach was needed to improve the quality of life of Albanians in the long-term. This led to the establishment of SOS Malta as the first international NGO in Malta, founded with the aim of empowering people in times of crisis to bring about development and change in their country. Since then, the NGO has carried out humanitarian missions in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Palestine, Haiti, Libya and Turkey. Eventually, SOS Malta began to focus on longer-term development interventions to improve living conditions in India, Sri Lanka and Uganda, making Overseas Development one of the main pillars of its operations.
On the home front, SOS Malta has earned a solid reputation for its advocacy of social issues and the promotion of good care and practice models for the benefit of socially-disadvantaged groups. In the 33 years since its inception, SOS Malta has worked tirelessly to consolidate its work on four other pillars, namely: Social Solidarity, Volunteering, Research C Training and Fund Operator of EEA-Norway Grants for NGOs.
Under the social solidarity pillar, SOS Malta runs projects that promote the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups and combat stigmatisation and discrimination. One such project was CoMe Home, which explored the barriers faced by people from migrant backgrounds when trying to access decent and affordable housing and the strategies they use to overcome these challenges. This project was carried out in partnership with organisations in Turin and Thessaloniki.
Other ongoing projects that SOS Malta is implementing either in partnership or as lead organisation are Language Buddy, Hatedemics and ReMaC. Language Buddy aims to improve the language learning of students (aged 12-17 years) with a refugee or migrant background through mentoring and a buddy system. Hatedemics aims to strengthen preventive and reactive measures against hate speech and disinformation online by empowering NGOs, fact-checkers, authorities and young people in Italy, Malta, Poland and Spain to prevent and combat polarisation and the spread of racist, xenophobic and intolerant speech. ReMaC (Reinventing Mainstream Classrooms) promotes innovative teaching practices to engage local and migrant students (aged six to 12) in intercultural and language learning activities by using advanced digital tools and connecting them with language teachers in Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Malta.
SOS Malta is also the Fund Operator of the Active Citizens Fund, which was established under the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 with financial support from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The programme provides funding to strengthen the capacity of the civil society sector to advocate for human rights and social inclusion. Under this programme, SOS Malta has funded myriad projects in various areas including rule of law, inclusion of vulnerable children and youths, empowerment of survivors of domestic violence, anti-racism and media literacy. These projects and initiatives have been implemented by over 17 Maltese non-governmental organisations, some of them in collaboration with partners from the funding states.
One of the longest running volunteering programmes, which is an integral part of the SOS Malta pillar of volunteering, is VolServ. Visitors to Mater Dei may have seen the orange-clad volunteers serving tea and coffee in the outpatient areas and directing people to the correct wards. The VolServ team currently consists of 40 registered volunteers who work rotating shifts depending on their availability. Anyone who has some spare time and would like to join the team can contact SOS Malta for more information.
Another flagship project of SOS Malta is kellimni.com, a 24/7 online chat support service managed by a team of 20 qualified professionals. The service also offers free online and face-to-face individual counselling sessions as well as targeted therapeutic group sessions. The therapeutic group sessions are organised around specific topics. This year these include anger management, mindfulness, the IVF process, loneliness and bereavement and eating disorders. The topics of the group sessions are announced on the SOS Malta FB page weeks before they start so that interested participants can register and an in-take process is initiated.
For more information visit the SOS Malta FB page or phone on 2133 5097, 2124 4123.