Serving Seniors & Education For All

SHIRSHA GUHA, 39, Director, Deep Probeen Porisheba The beginning: It all started in 2013 when Shirsha Guha came to Kolkata to visit an old relative."She used to have so much joie de vivre. But when we met her she was a shadow of her former self. She had lost self confi dence and she was lonely and iso-lated," she says. That is when the idea of starting Deep Probeen Porisheba (DPP), a company devoted to providing care and com-pany to the elderly, occurred to her. Born in Denmark, with her formative years in the Caribbean, Guha had always wanted to do something in "her own country". "We started in Salt Lake and did whatever we could to set it up while on a short holiday in Kolkata. I would then keep coming back every two months to see how it was going," she said. But it was when her army offi cer husband chose Kolkata for a two-year peace posting that she decided to come back at the helm of DPP. With almost 70 members, DPP provides solutions to problems the elderly often face. 

A friend in need: With youngsters working outside Kolkata or maybe even the country, it's the elderly who get isolated. "Even having an army of caregivers in the form of ayahs, nurses, drivers and maidservants isn't enough," says Guha. "What they need is an equal companion. Our employees or sahayaks are graduates and sometimes even medically trained. They come with a thor-ough background check and are there to escort them when they need to step out, all for a nominal fee," says Guha.

  MUKTI GUPTA, 35, MD, Mukti Group and president, Help Us Help Them

Practice teaching:  If children can't go to school, the school must go to the children. That was the thought behind the School On Wheels, a school that runs on a bus, travelling to three different locations in the city to educate street children. Over 100 chil-dren study in the bus, which goes to Park Circus, Rashbehari and Rajabazar. The brains behind the project, Mukti Gupta runs The Park Plaza Hotel in addition to running another free school for children at Mallickpur, about 80 km from Kolkata. Education has always been a cause that is close to Gupta's heart. She was just a 12-year-old when she started coaching poor children in English and Mathematics for free. "I have always believed that the one thing that can solve many of the country's problems-unem-ployment, crime rate, poverty-is education," says Gupta. A bus worth lakhs wasn't the cheapest strategy to help educate street children, but Gupta made it work by approaching the CSR divi-sion of Tata Motors.

A fine balance: She believes in providing a com-plete education to the needy. For the Mallickpur school, she tied up with NIIT to give them a computer lab and make them technologically savvy. There is also a swimming pool where a national level swimming coach has already reared a few district and state level swimmers. In the bus, there's a fl at screen television to help the children watch educational as well light-hearted fi lms, and a harmonium for music lessons and cupboard full of board games. "You can't draw in children to a school with just studies. Children are the same everywhere," says Gupta.