After our recent visit to the Calcutta Kids team in Fakir Bagan, one word kept coming to mind: Commitment. Over the last year, our community health workers and other staff have shown time and again just how committed they are to the well-being of beneficiaries and to maintaining strong, trusted relationships with them. ...
Kanchan S., a Calcutta Kids beneficiary and mom of three, has had tuberculosis twice. Even with treatment, Kanchan continues to experience health complications from TB. Thankfully, access to vaccines means that Kanchan’s children can be spared the suffering she’s endured. Through Calcutta Kids, Kanchan has vaccinated all three of her kids to protect them from devastating...
Here’s a truth we’ve known for some time: community health workers are the heroes of Calcutta Kids. They earn our beneficiaries’ trust, get to know their families, and provide them with life-saving counseling, education, and care....
When we founded Calcutta Kids nearly 20 years ago, we didn’t start from scratch. We drew from brilliant public health experts like Jon Rohde, a Harvard-trained pediatrician and public health specialist who has dedicated his life and work to the global south. Jon served as both head of UNICEF in India and Special Advisor to the...
The December graduation ceremony of Ashayein, the Calcutta Kids Adolescent Girls Program, was a true celebration. Ashayein means hope, and at this event honoring the first cohort to graduate, the sense of hope was palpable. At the end of the ceremony, graduates danced and sang “Ashayein,” our program’s theme song, borrowed from a famous Hindi...
In 2018, it seemed unlikely that Neha, then a 15 year-old girl from Fakir Bagan, a slum community on the outskirts of Kolkata, would have a say over her future. Neha’s grandmother, the matriarch of her family, had already decided that grade 12 would be the end of Neha’s education — a choice that would...
After three years away from India due to Covid, our family — Evangeline, Noah, our 4-year-old son, Zubin, and our 16-month-old daughter, Anushka — traveled to Fakir Bagan and reunited with the Calcutta Kids team in December 2022. We applaud our team and couldn't be prouder of all they have achieved and continue to achieve even...
Thank you so much for your continued support and partnership — especially with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, in early 2022, Calcutta Kids was able to resume all of its in-person operations. The pandemic has strengthened us as an organization and brought us even closer to the Fakir Bagan community, while providing us...
In the first half of 2021, the Covid-19 Delta variant engulfed India and caused a level of turmoil that no one saw coming. We at Calcutta Kids had no choice but to throw our playbook out the window. Instead, we asked ourselves: What does the Fakir Bagan community need most right now, and what can we do...
Honestly, the odds were stacked against us this last year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic. As you know, we’re a small organization built on providing care in the clinic, visiting women and children in their homes, and convening beneficiaries for fellowship, learning, and discussion — all activities that require being together in person. But...
