St Vincent de Paul Society
While the name given to it by the young Catholic students who founded it in Paris in 1833 is the St Vincent de Paul Society (patron saint of charities), modern day members would like to remind newcomers of the true meaning of SVP — service for victory over poverty.
To renew the church’s commitment to work for the marginalised, Indian branches of the SVP have been active since 1863. In Mumbai, there is a unit of the SVP active in many of the parishes, adopting families, encouraging them to become self–reliant and on a larger scale, setting up leprosy hospitals and homes, and an Aids hospice to provide treatment and a home for families affected by HIV/Aids.
Encouraging traditional talents has also been part of the focus of the SVP. An early scheme begun in the late 19th century was a project to encourage the traditionally highly reputed pottery on the island of Moolampally. The SVP unit called the Verapoly Central Council began this.
Presently, the society runs tailoring and embroidery classes, education schemes, handicraft centres, small scale agricultural projects, the distribution of goats and cows for dairy produce, schemes for knitting of fishing nets, providing fishing boats and nets, homes for the homeless, medical clinics, homes for the aged, and holding eye camps. All activities concerned with self–empowerment and livelihood, in a nutshell.
As far back as 1885, one of the first leprosy homes set up in the country was the one founded by the St Vincent de Paul Society, in Trombay, a Mumbai suburb. The home was erected on a palatial property donated by the well–known Albless family of Bombay and subsequently conveyed to the Society as a gift in trust to be used for a lepers’ asylum.
This was the beginning of the Eduljee Framjee Albless Leprosy Home a major medical relief centre. Since 1992, both men and women are being admitted as indoor patients here.
Apart from the dispersed activities within the 80–odd parishes of the Mumbai Archdiocese — adopting families, providing material and other aid with an aim to encourage self–reliance — the Shanty Bhuwan, Home for the Aged, located at Kalyan and the newly–conceived, 15–bed Aids Hospice (constructed in 1996) at Trombay, today constitute it’s major presence in the region.
Ninety per cent of the ‘beneficiaries’ of all the society’s schemes are non–Christians even though funds for the construction of the Aids Hospice or for any of the other social service projects or schemes are collected largely from the Christian community.
The last fund–raiser by the SVP was a unique method to involve partnership and involvement from the community, justifying the new-found motto of the SVP — Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM).
A total of Rs. 63 lakh was raised from the Archdiocese of Mumbai by enlisting the help of Christian parishioners in seeking “partners in the common cause”. Over 30,000 flyers were distributed through the church to solicit monetary support. A few thousand enthusiastic participants contributed amounts ranging from Rs 10 to Rs 5,000, to become “partners” in this unique scheme that reaped rich dividends.
Now, the society aims even higher to build a 100–bed full–fledged Aids Hospice for men, women and children, suffering from the dreaded disease. The Rs. 4 crore project is ambitious but when completed it will fill a crucial and gaping void.
Yet another instance of a Christian institution, stepping in critical areas where neither government institutions nor private enterprise show any desire to tread.