In 1963, Latin America's third SOS Children's Village was opened in the capital of Ecuador Quito. The city lies in a narrow, fertile Andes valley, at the foot of the Pichincha volcano in northern Ecuador. Quito is the oldest capital city in Latin America and has retained much of its colonial character.
SOS Children's Village Quito, which is 18 kilometres from the Equator, can be reached from the city centre by car in about 30 minutes. It was built on eight hectares of land and has twelve family houses, a village director's house, an administrative building with offices, a medical treatment room and a house for the "SOS aunts" (SOS Children's Village mothers in training who assist current SOS mothers in their everyday work and stand in for them if they are ill or on holiday).
Two SOS Youth Facilities (for girls and boys) were set up in urban Quito in 1995. Young people from the SOS Children's Village can be housed there for the period of their secondary or vocational education, which gradually prepares them for an independent life. A total of eight SOS Social Centres were created in Quito between 1991 and 2005. They are run as day-care centres, each able to offer daytime supervision for up to 160 children. This enables their mothers to make a contribution to the family income by means of paid work and prevents poverty-threatened families from breaking up. Furthermore, the SOS Social Centres offer preventive health care for children.