Mags collects more than €70,000 for Kolkata

AN Ardnacrusha-based public health nurse, who has helped to raise in the region of €70,000 for hundreds of poverty-stricken street children in India in recent years, remains as passionate as ever for this worthy cause.
Not content with making a huge difference to the lives of malnourished children living in appalling conditions in Kolkata (Calcutta), Mags O’Sullivan has organised yet another fundraiser to improve their dismal plight.
This time, it is an adult Hallowe’en party, with optional fancy dress, in the Loft venue above the Locke Bar in Limerick City on Friday, October 28, at 9.30pm. 
When Mags visited Kolkata with another public health nurse from Patrickswell, Noreen O’Grady, in October 2006, she couldn’t get the distressing images of squalor and deprivation experienced by hundreds of families out of her head. At Kasbah, a home for abandoned young street boys, she saw children scavenging for food from skips in a desperate bid to survive.
With the help of family and friends, the duo raised about €20,000 in 2007 for the Khirdirpur project in Kolkata. Mags estimates, on average, between €15,000 and €20,000 has been raised since then. Her daughter, Aisling, and her friend, Alec Ward, also played a big part in their fundraising. While in transition year in Laurel Hill Secondary School in Limerick, they also visited Kolkata in 2009 with Mags spurring them on further fundraising efforts.
Mags, who works in the Southill Health Centre, has also participated in a fundraising trek in the Himalayas to raise money for the Hope Foundation.
Mags estimates there are 30 families with up to 150 adults and children living in a plastic shack that are part of the Khirdirpur project. In many cases, three or four generations of a family are living in one room.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. In 2009, Mags saw at first-hand the benefit of fundraising following the purchase of a water pump, eliminating the need for women to walk miles to get water, while a new breakfast club provides food for children before they attend a new school in their locality from 9am to 1am.
A free vaccination programme paid for by the Hope Foundation has also been provided for children in a bid to reduce the high child mortality rate and a new hospice has been built to offer care for Aids and HIV sufferers.
The Hope Foundation also teaches women new job skills such as dress making to help them avoid being forced into the sex trade.
Mags, who hopes to return to Kolkata within the next two years, explained the fate of thousands of children born and brought up on the street is determined at birth.
“Most of them lack the basic necessities of nutrition, shelter, education and medical care. They are born into poverty, grow up abandoned in filth and ignorance and die alone, unless they are offered a chance.
“Very often children are sold into child labour, child prostitution and organ donation. These children have no birth certificates and are considered an easy target because very often they are separated from their parents. Exploitation of children is very common. The Hope Foundation gives street children the prospect of a better life filled with hope,” she stated.
Mags said she is finding it harder to raise money in the wake of the dramatic increase in unemployment and wage cuts here.
“It is also harder to get permission for bag packing in major retail stores. In the past, it was relatively easy to get approval, now you have to go all the way up to corporate level to get permission,” she added.
Set up in 1999 to raise funds for one girls’ home, The Hope Foundation is a registered Irish charity with offices in India, the UK, Germany and the USA.
It now works with 16 Indian partner organisations to rescue thousands of children from the streets and slums of Kolkata to enable them to have a better future.
To date, through education alone, Hope has reached out to almost 25,000 children.
For further information or to help with fundraising, contact Mags at 087 9189833.