Successful trip to Calcutta a message of HOPE

AT the start of this school year, Anne Copplestone, nurse at the South Infirmary and volunteer at the HOPE Foundation, came in to my school to talk to my transition year about the opportunity to go out to Calcutta and visit the HOPE projects over there to see the work they were doing.

She told us from the start that it was going to be tough to raise the money to get over there (€3,000), and assured us that it wasn’t some kind of holiday.

She inspired seven people in my year, including myself, and 43 others from different schools around Cork.

At the start of April, after six months of preparing for the trip, and a lot of hard work (made easier by help from friends and family) and preparation we left for Calcutta.

It was an almost indescribable experience for all of us. We visited people living in unthinkable conditions, poverty to an extreme that most of us had never come across.

We visited many different schools, some were proper buildings with proper supplies and the children lived there, some were nothing more than a room in the middle of a slum. The trip was a success and everything went smoothly.

I cannot express enough gratitude to Anne for the staggering amount of effort and work she put into organising the trip for such a large number of people, and I wish her luck in next year’s trip.

Laurie Purkiss (16)

Ashton School

Blackrock Rd

Cork