Calcutta Rescue
The Main Operations
- FOUR SEPARATE MEDICAL CLINICS
Are located in different areas of Kolkata and offer free primary healthcare, plus specialist medical programmes,including leprosy treatment. - CLINICS ON WHEELS
Are stationed close to slum areas, allowing residents easy access on foot to free medical care, plus health education, hygiene and disease prevention. - RURAL MEDICAL CLINICS
Operate in the outlying countryside, providing free medical treatment and health care for impoverished villagers. -
TWO SCHOOLS IN KOLKATA
Provide free education, health care, nutrition, and the prospect of a successful future to over 500 disadvantaged or orphaned children -
ARSENIC FILTERS
Protect villagers from poisonous and potentially fatal drinking water. - VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMMES
Teach people different skills which allow them them to earn a living. - A RURAL WEAVING CENTRE
Provides training in spinning and weaving. The end products are used in producing handicrafts plus making bandages/dressings for the clinics. -
A HANDICRAFTS WORKSHOP
Offers instruction in the making of handicrafts and decorative items. The workers learn valuable skills, earn a good salary, and the revenue from sales helps to fund the work of Calcutta Rescue.
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Calcutta Rescue is dedicated to helping the poorest and most disadvantaged
people
in Kolkata and rural West Bengal
-The
spectrum of medical help goes far beyond treating diseases, injuries, burns and
other trauma. Those facing a slow death with drug-resistant HIV or TB and are given
life-saving medications. Leprosy victims receive not only effective treatment, but
custom-made shoes to fit their permanently deformed feet.
Left untreated, Leprosy is a relentless, crippling and terrible affliction
Custom-made footwear brings mobility and dignity to leprosy victims
with feet deformed by the disease
At
the clinics, care
goes beyond laboratory tests and investigations to surgery and
treatments for
cardiac, cancer and other conditions, often by an authoritative referral
to government hospitals, who tend to turn unkempt homeless people away,
especially if they have no identity papers.
Calcutta Rescue's four clinics are low cost, simple, but efficiently run and very effective
- This is supplemented by free clothing, nutritional supplements, and travelling
expenses for those arriving from the countryside. Beyond these areas, Calcutta
Rescue also works closely with other agencies in providing disability care,
physiotherapy and emotional support.
- Lastly, but of vital importance, Calcutta Rescue has installed and maintains filtration units to remove arsenic from water wells in West Bengal. This is saving thousands of villagers from long-term exposure to poisonous arsenic, which causes cancer, most commonly of the skin, lungs, urinary bladder, and kidney.
- Calcutta
Rescue's activities also extend beyond the medical field into one equally vital
- granting the precious gift of literacy, learning and vocational training. The two
Calcutta Rescue schools in Kolkata provide free education, meals (and medical
care - one even has a dentist's chair!) to hundreds of eager children, many of
whom progress to senior schools with fees and expenses paid for them.
The children, despite their situation, are a joy to be with.
- Every year
therefore, dozens of street children, otherwise doomed to a life of begging, prostitution, or
worse, graduate with a career opportunity. Patients and former students are also
given the opportunity to acquire useful skills such as computers, carpentry,
motor repairs, driving, hairdressing and cosmetic treatments, handicrafts and
weaving.
Basic computer skills open the door for future employment
In the latter case, two weaving workshops operate in the countryside
produce fabrics for clothing, bandages and also for a Handicrafts Project where
attractive items, now officially designated Fair Trade, are offered for sale to
visitors.
The spinning and weaving project creates employment, engenders skills,
plus provides raw materials for handicrafts and bandages
Foreign volunteers display handicrafts on sale to tourists at the
Fairlawn Hotel in Sudder Street, Kolkata.
The
annual cost of maintaining the operation is approximately 700,000 Euros,
generated by Support Groups in different countries, and individual donors
inspired by Jack Preger's story, plus impressed by what Calcutta rescue has become today - a
compassionate, no-frills, cost-effective organisation, dedicated to
helping the helpless.
If
you wish to help, you can donate any amount, secure in the knowledge
that your contribution will go directly to help the people described in
this text, and not to maintain air-conditioned offices, pay salaries for executives, or support a costly administration.
If
you visit
Kolkata, you will be able to witness this work happening for yourself -
and inevitably be inspired by it. Inspection tours of the clinics and schools are
arranged on a regular basis.
Lastly,
if you are making or revising a Last Will & Testament, what better
gift to leave behind than specifying an amount to be donated to Calcutta
Rescue?
