Feeding the unfed: Loretto responds to famine in India in the mid-1970s
Posted on June 24, 2024, by Loretto Community
Loretto’s Stop Hunger Fund (now simply called the Hunger Fund) financed the nonsectarian Child-in- Need Project for India which fed starving children in two regions following severe drought and crop failure. Loretto worked with Catholic Relief Services which identified the most urgent needs and oversaw food distribution. In addition, a project was initiated to provide nutritional training once the emergency eased. The New York Times provided in-depth reporting on the emergency and its causes in an article published on Sept. 6, 1974.
Children’s lives are being saved day after day, through the sacrifices, and in the name of, the Sisters of Loretto.
Eileen Egan, Catholic Relief Services, Interchange, June 28, 1975
In this photo taken in 1975, mothers in Thakurpukur bring children to a clinic funded by the Child-in-Need Project to bring food to those affected by severe famine.
By July 1976, the program, organized under Loretto’s Stop Hunger Fund (founded in January 1975), had served 12,777 infants and children under the age of five in densely-populated areas around Calcutta (now Kolkata) and in remote, highly inaccessible areas in the provinces of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
The photo appeared in Loretto’s Interchange publication on July 18, 1975.
To read all the articles in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Loretto Magazine, click here.
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