Irish charity helps children of Calcutta

Trevor Quinn meets founder of the Hope Foundation Maureen Forrest, and discusses the remarkable work that the Cork based organisation are carrying out in Calcutta, and the role of the volunteers who travel to the impoverished Indian city.

The Hope Foundation plan to visit NUIG in the coming weeks.

Calcutta remains one of the most deprived cities on earth.

Having visited Calcutta for the first time over 20 years ago as a volunteer with Goal, Maureen Forrest was haunted by the poverty, hopelessness and exploitation of the city’s street children. She says, “I knew when I went to Calcutta there was something positive I could do.” In 1999 after a second visit with her daughter she decided to establish the Hope Foundation, a charity based Irish organisation that has reached out to the people of Calcutta and given them a real chance of a better life.

Maureen had previously been involved in third world work for many years as a volunteer and fundraiser. When her family grew up she decided to take the opportunity to travel overseas on a more regular basis, and this travel brought her back to the harsh

She says the images of suffering and exploitation at first hand compelled her to act. She says she decided to set up the Hope Foundation because it was the right thing to do. “I suppose it is one of the questions I hear the most. I sometimes feel there is a very obvious answer. It was the right thing to do and in our lives I think we know exactly what the right thing to do is, and that was one of the right things I did.” She says that she felt after becoming a witness and seeing the extreme levels of poverty, her life could never be the same again. “It was a life changing experience”, she adds.

Initially Maureen hoped to be instrumental in funding one home for the street children. She acknowledges that the generosity of the Irish people helped ‘The Hope Foundation’, to thrive and grow into the fantastic organisation it is today. She adds, “it was quite amazing actually, the organisation and Hope itself seemed to have this amazing mind of its own and it took off on this journey. It was just the generosity of the people of Ireland that dictated where this journey was going.”

Maureen who is a mother and grandmother spends four months every year in Calcutta. She acknowledges that it is a big sacrifice on both her and her family, but she also knows the horror and desperation that so many of Calcutta’s young and old endure on a daily basis.

Maureen explains how shocked she was to see parents in extreme poverty using their children as commodities and sources of income, and selling them off to sex traffickers and as child labourers in order to survive. “We then decided to take a more holistic approach”, Maureen says. “We worked in the slums with the entire family, educating them that their children were there to be loved and nurtured, and that they should get an education. Education became our primary objective because without education the cycle of poverty will never be broken.”

At present ‘Hope’ have nine full time and part time staff working in Ireland and on average they have twelve volunteers working in Calcutta at any given time. The foundation also employ 714 highly qualified full time Indian staff who work as doctors, nurses, teachers and social workers. Maureen says, “Our whole philosophy in our work is the sustainability of it by the Indian people”.

In the last ten decade ‘Hope’ have funded five residential care homes for children, there has been the creation of a drug rehabilitation unit and the foundation have also funded a HIV aids hospice and a polio hospital. In recent years the foundation have set up a huge primary health care project which has seen and treated over 300,000 people. This project has provided vitally important immunisation and vaccination injections for children at risk of contracting life threatening diseases.

Maureen believes it takes a unique person to volunteer in a third world country. “I think people who decide to volunteer are a special type of person. I don’t think I have ever refused a volunteer a place on our projects, because people who decide to do it are people who want to do it and want to give back something to society.”

The Hope Foundation serves the poorest of the poor, and Maureen believes it takes a remarkable person to leave family, friends and personal belongings behind and fly into a totally alien world. “Our volunteers really need to go with an open heart and an open mind, because it is a totally life changing experience to travel to Calcutta,” she says.

She also maintains that the friendships made can last a lifetime. “There is a camaraderie that you will find among volunteers that you don’t find in any workplace really. They definitely have a friendship that never leaves for the rest of their lives.”

By Trevor Quinn

E-mail info@hopefoundation.ie

Telephone: 021-4292990