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Filmmaker Jane Richter discovered HOPE while researching her film Cameron, Coffee & Calcutta: A Traveller’s Tales, about the life of pioneer Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. In 2022, she visited Kolkata for over three weeks and spent time at HOPE’s projects.
(This is an edited version of Jane’s original blog, which was published in 2023 and is still available to read)
I first heard about HOPE sometime in 2021. I had just made a documentary film about Kolkata-born Julia Margaret Cameron (Victorian pioneer portrait-photographer) and was actively searching for a Kolkata-based charity to support, so that I could donate any money that was raised from showing the film.
Out of the ones I found, I was immediately attracted to HOPE. This was strengthened by the wonderful first contact I had with HOPE’s Head of Fundraising, Juliette Whittaker – it was a complete done deal from then on!
The first project I visited was Brian’s Way, which caters for service users with special needs. Ramanika Nandy is in charge of a programme, helping around 100 children from financially marginalised and vulnerable families for whom access to therapies for their children’s needs is unaffordable.
The children are provided with a step-by-step assessment over a three-month period, with targets and goal setting, and they are then offered therapies, which include physio, occupational, speech and movement and behavioural. HOPE is the only organisation offering this therapy support.
From Brian’s Way we moved on to Chetla Naboasha Centre (meaning ‘New Hope’), one of seven such centres within the project; each located in a different slum area.
Local children are registered here and take lessons. They are then enrolled in formal school but continue to come here for a daily support after school.
It is a remedial coaching centre with two community support groups, one for parents and a Child Vigilance Group. Both groups dealing with general issues surrounding children’s rights and child protection. In the case of the adults, this includes child marriage, addiction, child labour and trafficking, where to go to get help, what to do, Child Helpline etc.
The aim is to motivate other parents to enrol their children in school, thereby expanding the reach of education.
The children learn about general health and illnesses including Malaria, Dengue and Covid-19, which motivates them to get vaccinated. They learn to foster healthy living practices, starting with basic handwashing. A teacher-counsellor and an art teacher give emotional support to children three times a week, either as a group or individual.
After school, children come in for extra nutrition, perhaps a cupcake or a piece of fruit. Living as they do in family units of around seven or eight people, they seldom get a whole fruit to themselves at home.
On day two, visiting the Life Skills Training Institute was an amazing experience for me personally, thanks to Renu Singh, who runs the programme, and the immediate rapport we established.
Her fun-loving nature combined with her utter professionalism and versatility, together with the seriously good food, helps make the cafe a bustling, energetic place of fellowship and camaraderie. She trains her young team to a standard of excellence with patience and love.
I was first whisked upstairs to witness the hidden-away flurry of activity that constituted the delivery of the tailoring and beautician training courses. Both are clearly hugely popular!
English teaching is also on hand and the respective courses lead to formal accreditation. A job placement service is on offer, although the participants may end up working from home.
Downstairs, I was invited to peek into the kitchens to meet some of the trainees before partaking of their delightful food and drink (for which I returned as often as I could manage!).
Bhagar Crèche makes provision for 120 pre-school children, split in half according to age, across two nearby sites. Both are close to the dumping ground, which we walked to the outer edge of.
It is often the mothers who are the main breadwinners in these families, sifting through the rubbish to see what they can find to sell or reuse. Since the centre opened, they have left their children here. Before this they took them to the dump with them, meaning that the children spent long hours in an extremely unhealthy environment.
The families do not have enough money for food. So what the children get to eat at the crèche is vital. There may be cake or bread and jam on arrival and, later on, something like rice and either chicken or egg curry. When the children first started coming, many were underweight and had health issues, but as their time at the crèche has progressed, this has radically improved.
One student is a TB patient, so she is taught at home and food is taken over to her.
The Liluah Sishu Bidhyapith private school is another amazing project. Around 500 children attend, of whom at least 280 (if not more) are paid for by HOPE sponsors. This means fees, books, tuition, and uniform, and also includes a monthly nutrition pack. They also give a festival dress for Durga Puja, as well as a winter dress and Christmas gift. All religious festivals are celebrated because – in project leader Gautam Ghosh’s own words – “that makes for happy children!”
Extra tuition support is available to all. These children are all paid for by individual HOPE sponsors. One hour of after-school support is also offered to 330 children who go to the local government school, delivered by four teachers.
Some of the children attending the private school go on to good jobs and Gautam, who has been in charge here for seven years, is immensely proud. He spent some considerable time in his office with me talking me through his photograph boards, which chronicle many events and achievements of individual students e.g. getting into prestigious universities such as Presidency College (where several past students are currently studying) or gaining jobs with big companies/corporations
such as HDFC and Vodafone. One girl even landed herself a job as far away as Mumbai!
Many parents are rag-pickers and often it is only the mothers who work. Thus, it tends to be the mothers in particular who crave a better life for their children, which starts with a good job, and on a daily basis several appear in his office to beg Gautam “please sponsor my child”. A case history will then be gathered and sent off to the HOPE office for sponsorship consideration.
Hope Hospital has 40 beds – 30 of which are for homeless people. Of these, five are set aside for surgical procedures and five for those who are critically ill. Ten ICU (Intensive Care Unit) ones are made available for ‘middle class patients’.
Seventy percent of the running costs are self-generated, e.g. by income from the 10 beds for those who can afford the hospital’s charges (which are still considerably lower than average) or from profits from the hospital pharmacy, which is open to the general public.
The scarcity of beds in government hospitals means that there is only one available for every 746 patients who need it. Moreover, an ID card is necessary for admission and the homeless don’t have them, hence they will never get a bed.
Thus, this hospital is the only one of its kind in Kolkata, which admits the homeless. This fact needs some processing! As does the fact that there are now 90 charities from all over West Bengal working with Hope Hospital.
I haven’t yet mentioned Maureen Forrest, its founder who (luckily for me) happened to be in Kolkata at the same time, so I was fortunate enough to get to know her.
Maureen set up the Hope Foundation Ireland in 1999, and this was followed by the UK branch in 2007. It all started with just 13 children. Hope Hospital was started in 2008, and was a direct result of Maureen, a frequent visitor to Kolkata, trying in vain one night to get a street-dwelling child admitted to hospital. When Maureen returned home to Ireland she told friends about it, and together they vowed to do something about the situation.
I personally am thrilled to have spent time with the team at HOPE and to have got to know some of them. My heartfelt thanks to everyone I met. And for sure, I will continue to use my film as a way of fundraising for HOPE, whenever and wherever I can. I hope I have given you a good idea of what your donation will help these wonderful people achieve.
Having visited Kolkata now a fair few times, I have come to realise the full extent of HOPE’s impact on the community out there. Nearly everyone I have ever met there has both heard of them and are full of admiration for all the work they do. Anyone who takes the time to look into their numerous projects – and even more so if they visit them for themselves – can surely not fail to be of a mind to do anything other than to support them.
