Help reunite a separated child with their family.

We work in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine to find children separated by war and disaster, protect them, and bring them home.

Every gift starts a search.

Reunification is slow, unglamorous work. Records, phone calls, and knocking on doors. Your donation is what keeps a case open until it closes properly.

What each amount does

$35: Helps provide food and warm clothing for a child in crisis.
$75: Helps provide care while a child waits for their family to be found.
$125: Helps cover medical care, which costs far more in crisis zones.
$250: Helps fund the child-protection work that keeps a separated child from disappearing altogether.

Your gift goes directly to child protection programmes in the field
Field teams working in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine
Payments processed securely, and you can cancel a monthly gift any time

Bring a child home

Takes about a minute

Payments are processed securely. You can cancel a monthly gift at any time by emailing [email protected].

This is getting worse, not better

The headlines move on. The number of children growing up separated from their families does not.

48.8M

children were displaced by conflict and violence worldwide by the end of 2024, nearly triple the number in 2010.

1 in 5

children globally are now living in areas affected by armed conflict.

100,000s

of unaccompanied and separated children face heightened risk of trafficking, exploitation, and abuse.

Every one of those numbers is a child a family is still searching for.

Help a child now

Sources: UNICEF and UNHCR global displacement data, 2024 to 2025.

“No child should grow up alone, lost, or forgotten.”

It usually takes about ninety seconds.

A strike lands two streets over. A hospital evacuates at night. A crowd surges at a border gate and a hand comes loose.

No one decides to lose a child. It happens in the space between one moment and the next, and then the child is somewhere, the family is somewhere else, and neither has any way to reach the other.

Not every child in an orphanage is an orphan. Many have parents, grandparents and older siblings who are alive right now, and searching.

Every day apart makes a child harder to find.

Records go missing. Families move again. Names get written down three different ways in three different places. The trail cools.

And separated children are exactly who traffickers look for. A child nobody is asking after is a child nobody reports missing.

Speed is not a nice-to-have in this work. It is the work.

Help us move faster

Four steps between a lost child and a front door

This is unglamorous work. It is phone calls, records, and knocking on doors. Here is what your gift pays for.

Find them

Our teams work where separated children end up: hospitals, shelters, orphanages and reception points. Reaching them first makes everything after it possible.

Keep them safe

A found child is not yet a safe child. They are registered, protected, and kept somewhere accountable while the search for their family begins.

Trace the family

The slow part. Cross-checking names across registries, orphanage rosters and official records with local authorities, until two records turn out to be the same family.

Bring them back

Transport, verification, and the handover itself. Then food, medical care and time, because a child does not stop being frightened the moment they get home.

Three places where children are being separated right now

We respond wherever children are separated by war and disaster. Today, our field teams are focused on three critical regions.

GAZA

Delivering food, medical supplies, and emotional support to children and their families in a crisis that has displaced up to 1.9 million people in desperate need.

LEBANON

Working with outreach centres and over 100 orphanages to provide shelter, food, medical care, and emotional healing for vulnerable children.

UKRAINE

Working with orphanages and medical facilities to locate, protect, and reunite children with their families.

The handover takes about four minutes.

There is paperwork first, and identity checks, and a lot of waiting in a corridor. Then a door opens.

Some children run. Some go completely still and have to be walked forward. Almost none of them say anything for the first minute.

That minute is what your donation buys. Not a building or a programme. A minute, at the end of a search, for one family that had stopped expecting it.

Pay for that minute

Choose what your gift does

Amounts mirror the live donation form. Every one of them keeps a search moving.

$35

Helps provide food and warm clothing for a child in crisis.

Give $35

$75

Helps provide food, clothing, and basic care while a child waits for their family to be found.

Give $75

Suggested

$125

Helps cover medical care, which costs far more for children in crisis zones.

Give $125

$250

Helps fund the child-protection and anti-trafficking work that keeps a separated child from disappearing altogether.

Give $250

Choose an amount

Questions people ask before they give

Is my payment secure?

Yes. Payments are processed by an established payment provider. Shelter of Smiles never sees or stores your card details.

Can I cancel a monthly gift?

Any time, no questions asked. Email [email protected] and we will cancel it that week.

What happens to my money?

It funds the four stages of the work: finding separated children, protecting them, tracing their families, and bringing them home.

Who is Shelter of Smiles?

A humanitarian organization working to protect and reunite children separated by war, disaster and crisis, in partnership with local authorities and care facilities in the countries where we operate.

Why focus on reunification?

Because not every child in an orphanage is an orphan. Many are simply separated, with parents who are alive and searching. The orphanages we partner with keep these children safe and cared for while that search runs, and returning a child to their own family is what everyone involved is working toward.

Somewhere, a parent is still searching.

They have been for a while. They do not know where to look, and they cannot afford to search. You can change that today.

Bring a child home

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