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LORETO RAINBOW HOMES Many of the children living on the street are at great risk and need a secure place to sleep at night. Why not use our big schools, empty from 2 p.m. every afternoon to 8 a.m. the next morning ? So we have nearly 300 children living here – as they go to school at the same time as everyone else, they only need the school to live in after the others have gone home. A separate booklet gives further details. Anyone interested can contact us at smcyril@yahoo.com and give a postal address and we’ll mail it to you. Other Loreto Schools have already taken in children – Loreto Bowbazar has 181, Loreto Dharamtala has just opened with 30 and Loreto House has 120. We hope and pray that all big schools will open their hearts and doors to these, the most neglected and marginalized girls in our society. MICRO CREDIT We found many of the Rainbow mothers in debt to Money Lenders and realized that small term loans would take them out of the clutches of the money lenders and enable them to keep whatever profit they make and pay back their loans. The project was so successful that now the Government is giving more money to set it up on a wider scale, and take it out to the fringes of the city from where many of our street children drift in to look for food, because no one is able to earn and they have no capital to set up a small business and earn for themselves. A special grant from the Credit Union, Ireland brought to us by Moya and Stan has also provided additional funds for the programme. BHALOBASHA Thirty nine old ladies abandoned on the streets and station platforms of Sealdah are fed daily by our Rainbows with lunch and a chat to assuage their loneliness. Two lovely homes outside Thakurpukur are there to welcome those who have no family. The tragedy of these elderly ladies is that they sit there hoping against hope that their relations will finally come to reclaim them and they never do. National Children Science Congress – 2006 The National Children Science Congress ’06, Kolkata District level competition was held at Ananda Ashram girl’s high School, Naktala Garia on 4th November ’06.The topic chosen this year was Biodiversity. Our Class VIII students prepared 11 projects of which five were selected. These were presented at State level Competition held at Loreto Day School Sealdah on Nov 18th and 19th ‘06. Our five projects and their team leaders were : a) Ecology of Subhash Sarobar by Reshmi Chatterji b) Importance of medicinal plants on Humans with respect to Biodiversity (Ayurveda) by Chittaparni Dash c) Comparative study on Chemical and Organic manures on farming system, by PritaShome d) An alternative for shampoo and soaps e) Man made eco systems and mosquito breeding around Salt Lake, by Amrita Chanda Out of our five projects presented
at State level, two projects (a & e) have been selected for the
National Level Children’s Science Congress out of the 120 projects
which were presented from the various schools. The projects will be
presented at Gangtok from 27th December 2006 at the National Level competition.
Volunteers We are very grateful to our volunteers who come to work with us from so many countries. Since our last newsletter we have welcomed so many from Ireland, America, Australia, Germany and Holland that it is quite impossible to name them all here ! At this time of the year we also have a number of school groups coming. So far we have had the Belvedere College boys from Dublin, the Riverview boys from Sydney, and the John XXIII students. We look forward to having the Armidale pilgrimage and other school groups from Normanhurst, Kirribilli in Australia and Stanhope Street and John Scottus schools in Ireland. Our website We now have a website www.loretosealdah.com on which we are also uploading our newsletter. Do look us up. 150 years Loreto Sealdah began in 1857 in Bhaithakhana Church just down the road. We hope to celebrate the 150 years of our existence with a series of activities in 2007. Regular School News In the midst of all the activities going on in the school for the very poorest and most dispossessed, and the deep involvement of our regular children in all the programmes, the regular school goes on with its daily lessons and homework and examinations, results, reports, and all the plethora of activities which go to make up a good school. Our results were very good – all passed - 14 with stars, 33 with1st Divisions, 22 with 2nd Division and 68 letters. Our class XII results were equally good but perhaps what we are most proud of is our first three Rainbows to go to College – one to Loreto House for her general degree, one to St. Xavier’s for her Sociology and one to Loreto Commercial College who has already got her first part time job as a secretary. Our regular students have taken part in and won prizes in debate, public speaking, art, dance and many other co-curricular activities, including several music workshops by Spicmacay, as well as a classical dance programme and an animal mask dances which were really spectacular, a collage / T-shirt painting camp by TTIS, psychometric testing by Class XII’s. Our exhibition for the Better Calcutta
Contest was quite spectacular covering the past 60 years of Indian history
since 1947, and a good preparation for our presentation of 150 years
of school life in 2007.
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