Our History

Our rich history starts in January of 1974 when our founding member Mrs. Olive Hilda Miller (OBE, MBE, Cert. Hon., JP (Ret)) first established the National Council of Social Services (NCSS). The name then changed to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) in 1990, before changing again in 2020 to the National Children's Voluntary Organisation (NCVO) that we are known as today. 

Mrs. Olive Miller first began the Organisation for the purpose of meeting community needs that other Service Clubs did not at the time. Some of these needs was a facility for children with special needs, public preschools, financial funding for welfare, handicapped people, counselling services, retirement homes, scholarship programs, and much more.

In an effort to support early childhood and special needs education, the NCSS established public preschools in North Side, East End, Bodden Town and George Town, as well as the Lighthouse School. Caring Cousins was put in place and took over the former welfare fund and provided financial support for the handicapped. A Lifeline and telephone counselling service was set-up to support persons over the age of 8 years with any problem/s they wanted to talk about. Plans for the Pines Retirement Home began in 1976 and was finally opened in 1983 to aid in the care of the elderly.

These service initiatives, along with Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Pink Ladies, the John Gray Memorial Scholarship Fund, are just a few of the programmes that “paved the way” for the many service programmes that followed; and they all first began under the umbrella that is the NCVO. As it is today, they have either branched off on their own, or are unfortunately, are no longer an active programme.

Today, the NCVO now focuses specifically on the needs of low-income families and their children who are in need of support as it relates of foster care and early childhood education. We do this through the Nadine Andreas Residential Foster Home programme and our Jack & Jill Nursery and Miss Nadine’s Preschool programme.

We currently house and care for 10 children in our 24/7 residential foster home, and 60 children aged between 3 months and 5 years enrolled in our nursery and preschool.

Our immediate focus is to raise the funds necessary for us to continue to provide the best services and staff to these children - with the help of corporate donations, our supportive community, and our tireless volunteers.

Investing in early childhood education and foster care has multiple long-term payoffs, all of which benefit not just the children involved but the community at large.