Emergency Food and Medicine for Kolkata's Poorest

Hunger has the most pernicious effect on the poor: already vulnerable, with unhealthy living conditions and lacking basic necessities like clean water and electricity, hunger drags a family so low that no amount of effort will help them climb out of the desperate cycle of poverty.  Without enough food a labourer hasn’t the energy to work; a child can’t concentrate in school; the sick won’t recover; the weak fall sick. And you can only imagine how a parent feels when she cannot feed all the hungry mouths.

This project aims to provide emergency food and healthcare to help a family through a particularly rough period. With full stomachs, all the family members can start to function again.

Saheen is still at school. Her father died recently leaving her mother to support her son and two daughters. Saheen’s mother is a maidservant – which is extremely low paid and often exploitative work. It is typical for poor illiterate women to take up this kind of work.  On a monthly income of  Rs4000 (£43 or $56) the family cannot survive. It is vital that the children remain in education so that they are able to secure good jobs and take care of themselves and their mother.  A regular food ration from Tiljala SHED makes all the difference: the children can concentrate in school because they have enough to eat and the ration is also an incentive for the mother to keep the children in education.

Farah’s life has become very difficult. She remained in school until class 10 and left to become a shop assistant. She worked in a tiny shop in Kolkata’s Burrabazaar selling cheap jewellery. She recently fell in love with a boy and married him against the wishes of the boy’s family (presumably because she brought no dowry). The boy’s family summoned him home leaving Farah pregnant, jobless and destitute. Farah had supported her widowed mother but now she has a baby and cannot work. They are all very hungry and in need of rations to help them through this period.

My colleagues in Kolkata report how important these food rations are and how the recipients are moved to tears when they realise they can feed their families. Thanks to your generosity – you are saving families from hunger and despair.