Hermann Gmeiner was born in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg in 1919. His mother died when he was very young. The sufferings of so many orphaned and homeless children after the Second World War convinced him of the need to find a way of helping them.

Out of Hermann Gmeiner's unswerving conviction that help can never be effective where children have no home, the SOS Children's Village idea was born, and it was first implemented with the foundation of SOS Children's Village Imst in Austria in 1949. Since then the SOS Children's Village idea and educational principles have been acclaimed all over the world.

In 1960, Hermann Gmeiner was elected the first President of "SOS-Kinderdorf International", the umbrella organisation of all national SOS Children's Villages Associations. He held this function until 1985. Hermann Gmeiner died in Innsbruck (Austria) in 1986.