Kolkata

In 2009 Bernd Meissner was sent to Calcutta by the Siemens Company. He and his wife have been fascinated by this city ever since. They stayed on after he changed jobs; he is now CEO of Hunger Hydraulics, a Würzburg-based company, and is involved in marketing special applications for hydraulic cylinders.

The couple had long felt a special affinity with India. They had been on holiday here three times and had travelled round the country with friends from Mumbai (Stuttgart’s partner city). When they got the offer of a job here, they both agreed: “We’ll do it!”

It is a venture “we have never regretted,” say Gundel and Bernd Meissner in unison as they meet the journalist from their home region in their apartment. All three, by the way, enjoy – after so much English - chatting away to their heart’s content in their Swabian dialect.

“It was clear to me from the beginning that if I go to Calcutta, I want to do some kind of social work,” says Gundel, a business economist, who trained at the Volksbank in Kirchheim before studying Business Administration at Nürtingen’s University of Applied Sciences.

This became a realistic option as soon as they came into contact with the circle of “ex-pats”. Who are they? “It’s short for expatriates. We are, as it were, the displaced people here,” laughs Bernd Meissner. And this social commitment was fuelled again when Gundel Meissner came across the International Women’s Club. One woman there, for example, is trying to get girls out of the red-light district.

The woman from Swabia, however, is devoting herself mainly to a project called “Happy to help”. Here she works together with Kimi Koshy, head of St. Paul’s School in Calcutta. 100 of the 800 pupils there come from families that are so poor that they actually cannot afford this English Medium School. Parents and children have to manage on an “income” of between 10 and 30 euros a month.

Thus Gundel Meissner never tires of looking for sponsors who are willing to pay 32 euros a month. This is enough for school uniform, books, lunch, medical care and similar costs. “Education is the all-important key to an escape from poverty,” emphasises the daughter of Dr. Rolf Röhm.

Co-helpers for West Bengal from Swabia

Her father, the former Social-Democratic member for Nürtingen in the State Parliament, who will be 85 in April, is currently one of her biggest sponsors. And her brother Hans-Rudolf Röhm, previously a voluntary co-worker in the team “Bastion” in Kirchheim, who is a partner in the Stuttgart auditing company Deloitte and Partner, as well as the bus operator Eberhard Dannenmann are also doing their utmost to support her work.

And not only for St. Paul’s school, but also for a project in one of the poorest regions in India. On the island of Gosaba in the Sundarbans, the National Park in the Ganges Delta on the border to Bangladesh, she is working together with Sister Philomena, a nun, to organise back-up teaching in maths, English, Bangla (the language of the Bengalis), dance and music. With measurable success: “Pupils’ performances have improved by between 20 and 30 percent.”

Anyone wishing to contact Gundel Meissner in Calcutta and perhaps offer support can do so via email: gundel.meissner@gmx.de.