About Calcutta Rescue in 85. Collin Street, Kolkata

In 1979, a British doctor, Jack Preger M.B.E. started a street clinic on Middleton Row to treat the most needy and poorest of the people living on the streets and in the slums of Kolkata & parts of rural West Bengal. Tourists, who passed by, stopped to help him and, when they returned home, set up groups of volunteers in their own country to raise money to support Dr Jack’s work. Calcutta Rescue is now a registered non-governmental organization with 175 + Indian staff including Doctors, Teachers and other professionals. Dr Jack is now 84 and still working today! The charity provides free medical care, education and other benefits to the most deserving, needy & poor in Kolkata and parts of rural Bengal irrespective of age, sex, caste or religion.
Calcutta Rescue has three clinics providing medication, nutrition, and health education. The services fill the gap where public medical services do not provide some medicines for the poorest people. It provides both basic and long–term treatments and some costly life-saving surgery and expensive medicines including treatment for HIV, along with other benefits of food, clothing and social support. Disabled children are taken care of by our Disability department.
The Calcutta Rescue Street Medicine Program face poverty head-on. In a specially equipped ambulance a doctor along with a team of staff visits areas where most of the people are street dwellers. The Street Medicine Program treats people immediately in the ambulance or refers more serious cases to Calcutta Rescue’s own clinics or government health services.
Preventive Health Program is another program where slum children up to 12 years old are provided with Vitamin A Prophylaxis (6 doses at an interval of 6 months) along with deworming.
Education is a key to improving the future for the poorest communities. So, Calcutta Rescue supports 600 students in the different mainstream (formal) schools who once started in the Calcutta Rescue (non-formal) schools. There are two non-formal schools providing starter education for children aged 4 to 6 years with 140 students in its rolls. Thereafter we fully support the children with fees, clothes, and school materials, when they are admitted to government (mainstream / formal) schools. We have Coaching Centers for these children including Computer classes to make sure they keep up with their school work despite the difficulties they face in their home lives. We support some of our students on into university education. Art, Sports, Music Dancing, and Excursions also contribute to an all round education. All the children have health care from Calcutta Rescue’s clinics and careful attention is paid to their nutrition so that they are well and healthy to learn.
Calcutta Rescue has two weaving projects in the rural area of South 24 Parganas, South of Kolkata. The centers at Tamuldah and Canning produce cloth for our patients and students clothing, winter shawls and bandages for our clinics by trained local unemployed young adults.
Our Fair Trade Handicraft project develops the skills of our former patients, ex-students and school drop-outs. The products, including different handicraft items made from cloth produced in the Weaving Centers, silk cloth from yarn produced at the areas where our Arsenic Removal Filters are installed or recycled sarees, embroidered cards, jewellery, notebooks, are sold locally and abroad.
Arsenic poisoning from groundwater occurs in parts of ruralWest Bengal. This causes serious health problems and a slow death for many villagers. Calcutta Rescue has installed 6 arsenic & Iron removal filters plus dedicated tube wells in several villages in the district of Malda,West Bengal.
Calcutta Rescue was partner for the Government “Swajaldhara” initiative for Arsenic Mitigation in Maldah district of West Bengal
Partnership with the Government
Calcutta Rescue is working as partners with the Government in different health intervention programmes like Tuberculosis control under the ‘Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme’ (RNTCP) of the Government Of India following the ‘Directly Observed Treatment-Short-course’ (DOTs) methodology of the World Health Organization in Ward 3 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and in Tamuldah 1 Gram Panchayat in Rural South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal responsible for a population of 55,000 and 29,000 respectively.
Calcutta Rescue is registered under West Bengal Societies Act 1961 and Foreign Contribution Regulation Act Calcutta Rescue’s infrastructure today includes –
In acknowledgement of the work of Calcutta Rescue, it was awarded the Joint Winner of the Best medium sized NGO in India in 2009 by the Rockefeller Foundation & Resource Alliance.
Calcutta Rescue continues its fight against poverty, ignorance and apathy providing no cost holistic healthcare, education and enhancing employment opportunities, to those who need it most.