Annual Report 2018/19
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ANNUAL REPORT 2018/19 Creating opportunities, transforming lives J Roos Photography J Roos CONTENTS From our Governing Council 4 From our Chief Executive 6 A small suitcase of huge memories 8 What happened in 2018/19? 10 Healthcare 12 Education 24 Handicrafts 32 Safe drinking water 34 Fundraising 36 Volunteers 38 Financial report 40 Compliance & governance 45 Thank you 46 Our contact details 48 Front cover: These children live in Liluah Bhagar, a bustee in Howrah, west of Kolkata. Their homes are right beside the enormous garbage dump you can see, and their animals scavenge there for food. One of our Street Medicine teams visits Liluah regularly to provide healthcare, including immunisations for children, and education about good hygiene and infectious diseases. We work in collaboration with another charitable organisation that is already providing safe drinking water, sanitation and education services to the community. Both images by Alan Joan Costa www.calcuttarescue.org 3 James James Frost FROM OUR Above: members of our Governing Council in GOVERNING 2019. Left to right: Col Amitava Poddar, Lionel Elloy, Samindra Roy, Wg Cdr Shomir Choudhuri VSM, Soumitra Bose and COUNCIL Dr GM Rahaman Calcutta Rescue started its journey 40 years back, that we have seen within the less privileged We plan to achieve our mission by: led by our founder, Dr Jack Preger MBE, from his communities we serve, we have adopted this • creating interventions aimed at inclusive growth and street clinics on Middleton Row. During the past new mission: development of communities decades, the charity has evolved, adapted and • expanding our latitude in education, with an increased overcome various challenges that came its way, Calcutta Rescue works to significantly enhance the focus on creating employability through vocational building to become a 150-employee organisation. well-being, learning and living standards of the training and careers counselling poorest communities in and around Kolkata. • building cross-organisational collaborations and As Dr Jack took his much-deserved retirement knowledge-sharing partnerships that will maximise our earlier this year, it’s important that everyone We only work in areas of high need where there is collective efforts at Calcutta Rescue continues to represent the inadequate provision by government, non-profit values that he embodied, every day: integrity, or private organisations. We initiate alliances and To strengthen our governance, we will continue to induct compassion, being resource-conscious, always work collaboratively with others to ensure we professionals from various walks of life. Our Governing learning, collaborating and having that all- deliver quality services to these communities. Council consists of members from the armed forces, important fighting spirit! education, engineering, finance, law and medicine. We also provide specialist healthcare assistance It’s also imperative that we now review the work for impoverished people approaching us from On behalf of the Governing Council, I thank all of our we do and take steps to enrich our programmes, other districts where such services are deficient. stakeholders – our beneficiaries, our employees and striving for a more holistic development of the volunteers, and our donors and partners who have communities we serve. To help us deliver this, we’ve revised our extended unwavering support to us. As we embark organisational structure and added ‘Living on this new mission, we count on you more than ever, So, this spring, following a three-day workshop standards’ as a new third pillar of our work, to help us drive this positive change for the people attended by people from all over the charity, we alongside health and education. Because this is a we serve. launched our new organisational strategy with the core change to our organisation, we have to gain vision of ‘Creating opportunities, transforming approval from the Registrar of Societies, which we’re Soumitra Bose lives’. Keeping in view the socio-economic changes in the process of doing. Honorary Secretary 4 Annual report 2018/19 www.calcuttarescue.org 5 Alan Joan Alan Joan Costa On 14 January 2019 at around 3.45am Dr Jack walked down the steps from his rooms on the roof of our Number 10 Education Centre and exited the building, probably for the last time. Thirteen staff were there waiting for him. He was showered with rose petals, hugged and kissed. Many of those gathered bowed to touch his feet – an Indian show of respect for a man who has dedicated 40 years of his life to serving the poorest of the poor. I found myself instinctively doing the same. He was driven to the airport in a convoy of three cars, final goodbyes were made, some photos FROM taken and then he slipped into the airport. Around 80 colleagues had organised to see Dr Jack off at 6.30am and the plan was to give him a guard OUR CHIEF of honour on the road outside Number 10 – the excitement and sadness were palpable in equal Left to right: Subhajit Sana, Assistant Project Officer in charge of Tala Park Education Centre; student Alauddin; student Sangita; Jaydeep Chakraborty, measure. However, very late the night before, flight Chief Executive; student Nilu; Ananya Chatterjee, Schools Administrator EXECUTIVE changes meant that he suddenly needed to take an earlier flight to avoid an uncomfortably long connection at Delhi. And so he disappeared under the cover of darkness without the goodbye we had Pharmacy. The process was long, bureaucratic and so wished to give him. It seemed symbolic of his life riddled with difficulties, so it was a real victory when and his character – to go about his work without the licence was eventually issued in September. fuss, attention or adulation. On the funding front, we finished the year well While there was a lot of sadness, and some tears, after a slow start, raising a total of Rs 8 crores during the period of Dr Jack’s departure, staff (80 million), of which 8% was donated specifically seemed to transition quite quickly back to focusing for the Pathshala project. This highest-ever total, on their work in the following weeks. Calcutta along with judicious spending, meant that we were Rescue is very much conducting business as usual – able to end the year with an operational surplus of there are patients to serve and students to teach – Rs 53 lakhs (5.3 million) – a much improved financial much as Dr Jack would want it, I suppose. But he will position compared to last year’s deficit. always have a place at the heart of this organisation, which is why we’ve bestowed him with the title of However, my most satisfying moment of the year Chairman Emeritus. Also, from 2019 onwards we’ll was the number of Calcutta Rescue’s Class 10 be celebrating Dr Jack’s birthday, 25 July, as students taking and passing their Board exams. Founder’s Day. We had 31 students sitting their exams and 26 passed – our highest-ever number. These included One of the last things that Dr Jack did before football-mad Nilu (featured in our 2017/18 annual leaving Kolkata was to visit our newly purchased report), an orphan who came to us when he was just education centre building, which, for the time being, five years old; day-dreamer Alauddin, the son of a we’re calling the ‘Pathshala project’. (Pathshala is a fisherman, who prefers being on a boat to inside a Sanskrit word used in Bengali and Hindi, meaning classroom; and soulful Sangita, who sings beautiful ‘a place to study’.) The building is a bright, airy and Sufi songs but must collect water for an hour every very spacious 150-year-old former residential home morning for her family, making her late for school that will replace the dark and congested Number every day. 10 centre on the outskirts of the city’s largest red- light area. The property search took us four years, These students are typical examples of the adversity and with the generous support of many around the our beneficiaries endure, yet they are resilient, world and primarily the Paharpur Foundation, we ambitious and determined to make a better life for will spend the coming year renovating the building. themselves. And most of them will – with a helping hand from you and Calcutta Rescue. While not glamorous, one of hardest things we did over the last financial year was to obtain a drug Thank you, licence from the West Bengal government for our Jaydeep Chakraborty 6 Annual report 2018/19 www.calcuttarescue.org 7 of food and necessities so that he could give all he For many years he was the only person in the could to people whose needs were so much greater whole of West Bengal who was providing free HIV than his own. treatment. And he is widely regarded around the A SMALL world as the grandfather of street medicine. Over the years he has survived prison, official persecution, repeated bouts of illness, death threats Even in his late 80s he remained a formidable and innumerable other obstacles. Obstacles that champion for whatever cause he took up. SUITCASE OF would have sent the average man home at a run. He was cunning and endlessly persistent, waiting But not Dr Jack. and watching for the slightest chink in his opponent’s armour. HUGE MEMORIES Even now, almost blind and beset with the infirmities of old age, his eyes still twinkle and his To his patients, and his loyal staff, many of whom iconoclastic humour remains undimmed. were originally patients from the slums themselves, SEAN DUGGAN HAS BEEN A UK SUPPORT GROUP he is, and will always be, a saint – even a god. MEMBER SINCE HE FIRST VOLUNTEERED IN KOLKATA He has been a fighter of the first order: a fiercely They have seen him showing a compassion IN 1991.