SOS Social Circus Program

Around the world, SOS Children’s Villages works with extremely vulnerable children and youth – helping to ensure that they have the foundation for a bright future.

An important part of this work is helping children and youth develop life skills that are vital for healthy relationships, academic success, future employability and successful integration into the community, such as:

self-awareness,
self-confidence,
emotional control,
stress management,
resilience and perseverance,
patience,
communications,
teamwork, and
interpersonal skills,

These “soft” skills can be difficult to define, teach and standardize, but they are critical. Young people need more than the “hard” skills of the traditional workplace. They also need confidence and the ability to deal with the challenges of everyday life.

SOS Children’s Villages and Cirque du Soleil have developed the SOS Social Circus program to help children and youth develop these important “soft” skills.

Since the program was first piloted in Mexico in 2014, the impact has been significant. Surveys from program beneficiaries and their caregivers show improvements in self-confidence, discipline, interpersonal skills and teamwork.