SOS Children's Villages has been present in France since 1956, when the first SOS Children's Village outside Austria was established in Busigny in Northern France. The work of SOS Children's Villages has increased over the years.
The SOS Children's Village Jarville is located in a suburb of the city of Nancy in the department Meurthe-et-Moselle. Nancy has approx. 104,000 inhabitants, about 10,000 of them are living in the suburb of Jarville which is just 4 km from the centre of the city. The SOS Children's Village Jarville was constructed in 1964 and already at Christmas of the same year the first SOS family, a group of thirteen siblings and their SOS mother, could move to their new home.
The SOS Children's Village consists of altogether ten family houses, a community centre with rooms for festivities and other social activities, a so called transit home for children whose stay at the SOS Children's Village is just for short term as well a an SOS Youth Community where the adolescents of the SOS Children's Village live during their higher educational or vocational training in order to get used to an independent life outside the SOS Children's Village.