RAINBOW HOME
Introduction
Loreto Sealdah is a large school
of 1400 girl students, situated in one of the busiest areas of Kolkata
viz. Sealdah, opposite one of the two large Railway stations in the
city. Over the years, this school has become more and more a Resource
Centre for the poorest of the poor, while retaining its character of
being a good school. To this end, each year since 1979, 50% of its initial
intake is from the poorest children from the slum areas, for whom the
school provides free tuition, food, clothing, rent, medicine, in fact
all they need to be successful in school, while the other 50% is from
well off parents who can afford to pay a fee to give stability to the
Institution.
Deeply concerned for the children living
at survival level on the streets, without any adequate shelter, often
without parents, or at best, very inadequate ones, the school encouraged
its class IX pupils to go out and invite the street children into the
school when they were free from their preoccupation with survival. Thus
began the Rainbow programme, which has been functioning since 1985.
In 1994, one little 4 year old girl
from the school was raped one night on the street and so the night shelter
was started to protect those at risk on the streets at night. Over the
years it has provided a home for children who feel the need of such
protection.
In 2002, His Excellency, the Governor
of West Bengal was instrumental in bringing the Partnership Foundation
into contact with Loreto Sealdah and so a wonderful collaboration was
initiated, to provide the financial requirement for 200 children in
this home and to eventually start 4 other homes where more children
(up to 1000) could be accommodated in the other Loreto Schools (200
in each) of the city.
With the increase in number of girls
in this centre and to provide for replication elsewhere, it has now
become necessary to put on record the basic guidelines by which girls
of all ages coming off the streets, have been, so far, welded into a
happy family and enabled to grow to their full potential in an atmosphere
of freedom, trust and responsibility. The following quotation from the
Loreto Booklet “Nurturing to Freedom” seems particularly
apt here :-
“In cherishing the most deprived
of His people,
And enabling them to take their place
with dignity among the others
our schools become places where truly
the Glory of God is manifested”
