Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC, better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, for the down trodden people of Kolkata and many other countries.
Father Francois Laborde was a priest of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Calcutta who spent over five decades building schools, boarding houses, medical facilities and housing for the poorest and for the physically challenged in Bengal.
He is a German national, a regular social worker at Mother Teresa’s Homes at Kolkata for a long time, for a month or a fortnight in a year during his holidays from his works at home place. He is the main sponsor of our main activities at Howrah.
She was a teacher in a English school and associated with late Fr. Francis Laborde in late 1960’s, in all his social activities in the management.
As a young worker with various commercial houses in Kolkata, in his spare time he used to be with youths of his time and used to engage with other social societies and their activities. In early 1970’s he came to Howrah and associated with late Fr. Francis Laborde as a volunteer, in his spare time after normal services with commercial firms.
While looking back, 25 years ago when we started this idea of social commitment and development activities, we had not imagined that it will grow so far as it is of now, and our 'Samiti' indeed stood in need of the hour of the people.
Well over many years, we were distributing dry-food rations to over 250 families every month at Pilkhana and around (a biggest slum in and around Kolkata) and during the Covid Pandemic time we distributed dry-food rations at 7 different parts of Howrah Town and suburbs; to a total of 2717 families and each food packet costing Rs. 650/-.
At education field, we are running a day school -in Hindi Medium upto class 7. At present, 220 children are attending our school, both boys and girls, with a strength of 12 teaching staff- all well qualified. These school children get mid-day meals, uniforms, books, and even medical care too. Other poor school children going to different schools numbering 56 of them are also helped by extending a monthly stipend of Rs.500/ per child, and even some with school books. We are also taking care of old-aged poor people and poor-widows by giving them with a monthly stipend of Rs.500/- per month, 55 such people get this aid. Some of our other activities include medical aid to the poor, Cataract operations - last year 30 such operations have taken place, making or repairing few houses of the poor people, etc. We also extend help to poor girls’ marriages and burials of the poor.
We are proud of continuing in this humanitarian efforts among the poorest of poor people around us.
We have our humble beginnings in 1997 with the active support of some volunteers of late Mother Teresa of Kolkata. At that time, a lot of foreign volunteers used to come to Kolkata and work with them for weeks or months together. At that time, “City of Joy”, a Book and a Film of the same name, about the slum-life of Pilkhana, was written by the famous French writer late Dominic Lapier became popular, and some of the foreign volunteers used to visit Pilkhana slum to have a feel of ‘City of Joy’. Among them, one Mr. Marcus Pohl, a young German man happened to visit Pilkhana often and meet late Veronica Jose and Mr. C.O.Jose,....
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