Hope and Homes for Children

Hope and Homes for Children is an international charity that works to stop the institutionalisation of children.

Instead, we fight for every child to feel the love and belonging of a safe family home.

The world doesn’t need orphanages.

They harm children and they harm society. And shockingly, 8 out of 10 children in orphanages have family members who would care for them – but a broken system hoards money, makes false promises, and keeps children neglected and families exploited.

Hope and Homes for Children was the creation of two extraordinary individuals who believed that every child had the right to grow up in a loving family.

Today, the organisation that Mark and Caroline Cook started at their kitchen table in Wiltshire in 1994, is at the forefront of a growing global movement to eliminate the institutional care of children.

In 1994, Mark Cook, a retired British Army officer, read about the plight of a group of children, struggling to survive in Sarajevo’s main orphanage at the height of the Bosnian War. He told his wife Caroline and within weeks the couple had boarded a plane to the city to see what they could do to help.

When they first set eyes on the Bjelave orphanage the building was in a terrible state. It had sustained hits from mortars and heavy weapons in its exposed position on top of one of the city’s hills.

“We wanted to give them hope, hence ‘Hope and Homes for Children’.”

Mark Cook, co-founder of Hope and Homes for Children

The teenagers who lived there had been left to run wild, living a semi-feral existence in the ruined building and scavenging food and supplies out in the streets. The babies were down in the basement, crammed inside the only warm room in the building.

The Cooks visited the orphanage for a week and promised the children that they would find a way to rebuild their home. “In order to keep that promise, we decided to start our own charity to provide homes for orphans of war or disaster”, Mark says. “We wanted to give them hope, hence Hope and Homes for Children.”