Botswana is in southern Africa, bordered by South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Since independence in 1966 there have been many impressive social and economic improvements.

Ninety-seven per cent of the 1.8 million population have access to safe water, and, with free primary education, access to learning is high - over 84 per cent of children are enrolled. 

However, the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world is creating enormous problems. 

Although agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80 per cent of the population, it supplies only about half of the country's food needs, with poor crops resulting from bad soils and erratic rainfall. Subsistence farming - crops such as sorghum, maize, millet and pulses - predominates along with cattle raising. The staple diet of the Batswana is maize meal, sometimes eaten with stewed meat or chicken, and locally grown vegetables such as cabbage, spinach and beans. Citrus fruits and melons are common.

SOS Children's Villages began working in Botswana in 1986 when the SOS Children's Village Tlokweng opened in a suburb of the capital, Gabarone, about 5 miles from the city centre. The village has 15 family houses, and each family has between ten and twelve children whose ages range from just a few days to around 16 years. Children attend the local government schools, all within walking distance, and the younger ones use the SOS kindergarten. At around 16 years old, the children move into one of the three youth houses where they take their first guided steps towards independence. An SOS vocational training centre teaches tailoring, welding and carpentry to give them the best possible chance of earning a living when they are ready to leave the village. Tlokweng also has a farm which provides most of the village's food requirements as well as further vocational training opportunities.

SOS Children's Village Francistown was built in 1998 on land donated by the government. Francis town is Botswana's second largest city and is about 250 miles north of Gabarone, near the border with Zimbabwe. The village has 15 family houses and a kindergarten which, like all SOS kindergartens and schools, is attended by children from the surrounding community as well as from the SOS Children's Village. There is also a small medical centre and two youth houses will be constructed in 2004.

Botswana is one of 123 countries across the world in which SOS Children cares for orphaned and abandoned children and communities in need.

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