SOS Children's Villages Canada was established in 1969 as a fundraising arm for the international work of SOS Children's Villages.
Its founders were some of Canada's leading public figures, including;
- Chief Justice Emmett Hall,
- Jeanne Sauve, Member of Parliament, who later became Governor General,
- Otto Lang, Cabinet Minister, and
- R. Gordon Fairweather, Member of Parliament and later, Chair of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
For many years, SOS Canada was run entirely by volunteers, most notably by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Messner. Born in Austria, the Messners were well acquainted with the work of SOS Children's Villages. As a Director of the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa, Joseph Messner had a long history of working on behalf of children. The founding of SOS Children's Villages Canada was one more step along that road.
SOS Children's Villages Canada grew and evolved into a national office, with staff who are responsible for continuing support of the international work of SOS Children's Villages, as well as, overseeing SOS Programmes within Canada.
SOS Children's Villages Canada recognized that there were many children here in Canada who require long-term stability in a nurturing family environment and designed a program specifically to serve them.
Canada's first SOS Children's Village opened in Margaretville, Nova Scotia in 1983. For close to 20 years, it raised children in urgent need. In 2002, when a change in provincial government resulted in vital funding being pulled, it was forced to close its doors.
On Canada's west coast, SOS Children's Village BC opened its doors in 2001 in Surrey, British Columbia. It continues to provide vital programming to children within the Village itself as well as children at risk in the surrounding community.
The first SOS Children’s Village on U.S. soil opened in Coconut Creek, north of Miami, Florida, in 1993. A second SOS Village followed in 1994, in Lockport, thirty miles southwest of Chicago, Illinois. The first ever urban SOS village was built in Chicago in 2004. Together, these four SOS Children's Villages provide homes for some 270 children and youths.
Through SOS BC’s Lifeskills Outreach and Youth in Transition programmes, together with an SOS Social Center, daycare, counselling, and basic clinic care in Chicago, over one hundred other vulnerable children and their families are supported.