Calcutta Rescue
The Missions of Charity is closed to volunteering on Thursday, so today I went with some of the other volunteers from Mother Theresa's to check out one of the other organizations in Kolkata that is working with the homeless.
Calcutta Rescue is a very different organization from the MOC. They also work to provide medical care for the homeless of the city, and education for the children, but instead of relying on volunteers to do the work, they rely on foreign donations that they use to educate and employ the local people. Many of the employees are former patients. The organization has one of their children attending university now, an accomplishment they are very proud of, and rightly so as the child started out homeless on the streets.
We we taken to visit both the school and one of the six urban clinics. At the school the children are fed both breakfast and lunch. The older children who are attending the government schools also come here for meals, homework support, and access to a computer lab. The kids look happy and healthy. None of them are undernourished, and they all get free medical care.
At the clinic, it was Mother/Baby day. Calcutta Rescue has a program that supplies nutritional supplements to the pregnant women, pays for them to birth the child in a hospital, and then continues to provide support to the mother and child in the form of nutritional supplements and medical care as long as she is breast feeding. There is also a support program for the fathers who are single because the mother dies during child birth. Each patient at the clinic has an ID card, and a medical record. At each visit they are required to go through 15 minutes of health education. This education will vary depending on what kinds of medical problems they are seeing in the community at the time. There is constant education going on around the problems of TB and intestinal health hygiene. The reward for doing the health education is reimbursement for the cost of transportation to and from the clinic, and a 'benefits package' which contains enough food to feed a family of 5 people for one day, and half a bar of anti-microbial soap.
In addition to the traditional medical aid programs, they have a special program to help the street children with disabilities such as Downs, Epilepsy, and Diabetes. The stigma of physical disabilities is so strong, that often times these children are kept hidden and do not receive the care that they need. The Calcutta Rescue is working to find these children and then connect the families with the government agencies that are already in place to help them. They are working to make use of a resource that already exists.
The work being done is extensive and it is impossible to describe all of it. TB clinics, rural clinics, a Lepracy colony, the work goes on and on. I asked about volunteering, and while they do use volunteers at Calcutta Rescue, they do so in a very different way. They only take volunteers who can make a six month or longer commitment, and they only take on volunteers that they need. The have some education experts who come over to help them with improving their schools. Most of the volunteers are medical experts who are working with CR for a very specific purpose. They use these experts to help train the local workers in new medical treatments or therapies that are being developed in Europe and then the hands-on work is being done by the local people. This makes the organization more sustainable and viable. The only volunteer who is working directly with the patients and not in an educational role is the pharmacist. Their current need is in help with fund raising, something I know very little about. I told Glen, the administrator who gave us the tour, that I would spread the word, and that when it is my turn to pick the Johnson Family Christmas Donation again, that I would remember Calcutta Rescue. Our donation may be small, but we will give what we can and spread the word.
They do not have a functional web site yet, but when they do, I will be writing about it again, and at holidays to solicit donations for a worthy and well run charitable organization.
Calcutta Rescue is a very different organization from the MOC. They also work to provide medical care for the homeless of the city, and education for the children, but instead of relying on volunteers to do the work, they rely on foreign donations that they use to educate and employ the local people. Many of the employees are former patients. The organization has one of their children attending university now, an accomplishment they are very proud of, and rightly so as the child started out homeless on the streets.
We we taken to visit both the school and one of the six urban clinics. At the school the children are fed both breakfast and lunch. The older children who are attending the government schools also come here for meals, homework support, and access to a computer lab. The kids look happy and healthy. None of them are undernourished, and they all get free medical care.
At the clinic, it was Mother/Baby day. Calcutta Rescue has a program that supplies nutritional supplements to the pregnant women, pays for them to birth the child in a hospital, and then continues to provide support to the mother and child in the form of nutritional supplements and medical care as long as she is breast feeding. There is also a support program for the fathers who are single because the mother dies during child birth. Each patient at the clinic has an ID card, and a medical record. At each visit they are required to go through 15 minutes of health education. This education will vary depending on what kinds of medical problems they are seeing in the community at the time. There is constant education going on around the problems of TB and intestinal health hygiene. The reward for doing the health education is reimbursement for the cost of transportation to and from the clinic, and a 'benefits package' which contains enough food to feed a family of 5 people for one day, and half a bar of anti-microbial soap.
In addition to the traditional medical aid programs, they have a special program to help the street children with disabilities such as Downs, Epilepsy, and Diabetes. The stigma of physical disabilities is so strong, that often times these children are kept hidden and do not receive the care that they need. The Calcutta Rescue is working to find these children and then connect the families with the government agencies that are already in place to help them. They are working to make use of a resource that already exists.
The work being done is extensive and it is impossible to describe all of it. TB clinics, rural clinics, a Lepracy colony, the work goes on and on. I asked about volunteering, and while they do use volunteers at Calcutta Rescue, they do so in a very different way. They only take volunteers who can make a six month or longer commitment, and they only take on volunteers that they need. The have some education experts who come over to help them with improving their schools. Most of the volunteers are medical experts who are working with CR for a very specific purpose. They use these experts to help train the local workers in new medical treatments or therapies that are being developed in Europe and then the hands-on work is being done by the local people. This makes the organization more sustainable and viable. The only volunteer who is working directly with the patients and not in an educational role is the pharmacist. Their current need is in help with fund raising, something I know very little about. I told Glen, the administrator who gave us the tour, that I would spread the word, and that when it is my turn to pick the Johnson Family Christmas Donation again, that I would remember Calcutta Rescue. Our donation may be small, but we will give what we can and spread the word.
They do not have a functional web site yet, but when they do, I will be writing about it again, and at holidays to solicit donations for a worthy and well run charitable organization.