By linda denicola
Staff Writer
PHOTOS BY FARRAH MAFFAI Rosalie Giffoniello captures the attention of students at the Eisenhower Middle School, Freehold Township, as she discusses the projects she is working on with children in Kolkata, India.
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — Two women are working together to teach awareness and sensitivity to privileged children in New Jersey for the benefit of poor children in Calcutta (now called Kolkata), India.
Lisa Johnston is an enrichment teacher in the Freehold Township middle schools and Rosalie Giffoniello teaches for a nonprofit organization called Empower the Children (ETC), which runs programs for street children in one of the poorest cities in the world.
Giffoniello is a Johnston family friend and the woman who is the force behind the 2-year-old Empower the Children program in India, which she co-founded with Janet Grosshandler-Smith, a school guidance counselor in Jackson.
In addition to teaching sensitivity, both educators want the children to get the message that one person can make a difference.
Students at the Eisenhower Middle School, Freehold Township, listen as Rosalie Giffoniello discusses the Empower the Children organization she works for in India.
Giffoniello, a tiny woman with a shock of curly black hair, is a lively example of what determination, pragmatism and an open heart can do.
"Sensitive, caring children are concerned about the world," Johnston said, "but they don’t know if they can make a difference. That’s why I like to bring Rosalie in. They make the connection and everyone is enriched."
Giffoniello, who lives in India, comes back to New Jersey for four months of the year to raise awareness of the many needs of the 100,000 poor children who live on the street, either alone or with their families.
"Fund-raising is hard. I talk to anybody who will listen, but I find that the pain of fund raising is balanced by the openness of the children when I go into the schools," she said during a conversation with Greater Media Newspapers.
Giffoniello spoke recently to John-ston’s seventh-grade social-global issues students at the Eisenhower Middle School, as well as to Annette Kay’s team 7A students at the Barkalow Middle School and to Johnston’s seventh-grade social-global issues students at Barkalow, about her work in Kolkata. The students, who are already pen-pals with children in India, are going to work on a number of service learning programs for her.
They will help her advertise her second annual fund-raiser, A Touch of India Festival, which will be held on June 22 from 1-5 p.m. at Georgian Court College, 9th Street, off Route 9, Lakewood. Last year, the initial fund-raiser was held at the Freehold VFW and more than $20,000 was raised, Giffoniello said.
"This year we are shooting for $50,000," she said.
The students will also help her with learning packets of activities that she uses with the students in the orphanages and schools in Kolkata.
"For example," Johnston said, "we will help her cut out 60 clocks to teach mathematical concepts and cut out the letters of alphabet for teaching English. Last year we helped her make maps for classes on the regions and cultures of the world."
Giffoniello looks for signs when she’s trying to make a decision. In fact, that is how she got involved with the India project. Before taking an early retirement and moving to India, Giffoniello lived in Neptune City and was on the child study team in the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District. There she worked with Johnston’s mother, Rita Liberati, who was head of the child study team.
After awhile, she left the Manalapan-Englishtown district and moved to the Jackson school district as a speech pathologist.
One day, Giffoniello said, she was lying on her bed thinking about what she should do with her summer. She had spent a couple of summers in Tibet teaching English to monks and nuns.
"Suddenly I heard something going bumpety-bump down the stairs. A book had fallen off the book shelf at the top of the stairs, one book out of the hundreds that were on the book shelves.
"It was a book about Mother Theresa’s work in India. It’s called Something Beautiful for God. In the book was a letter I had received from Mother Theresa inviting me to come to Calcutta to teach handicapped children.
"I felt it was a sign from above. Her spirit had kicked that book off the shelf," Giffoniello said, adding that she got on the phone right away and called a travel agency.
She spent the summer in Kolkata and taught at the Daya Dan Orphanage.
Giffoniello said she was shocked by what she saw and felt that she could make a difference. While the children were well-fed and clean, they were left all day to lie in their cribs or on the floor. She knew they needed stimulation and specially designed educational programs.
When she came back to New Jersey in the fall, she made the decision to take an early retirement and rent out her house, and within five months, she was back in India.
The organization that Giffoniello co-founded has grown to include an orphanage that houses six boys in a rented apartment. One of the things she hopes to accomplish with the money she raises here is to build a larger orphanage that will house 25 boys and provide a school and lunch program for 30 destitute street children. She would also like to include a medical clinic in the building.
Another orphanage houses 50 multiply challenged young adults. Once a very gloomy place, it is now attractively outfitted and decorated, thanks to volunteers in the Empower the Children organization, Giffoniello said. Another orphanage serves destitute children living in the Ultadanga slum. On Dec. 1, 2002, ETC inaugurated a daily lunch program which provides the children with their only nutritious meal of the day.
There are two schools. DISHA is a non-formal school committed to enriching the lives of the children living in the Manoharpukur slum. The teachers are being trained to use a preschool curriculum that was developed by ETC in America.
Another school is for girls only. The Adarshya Mitali Coaching Center for Girls serves 17 girls living in a large slum near Rabindar Sarobar. The girls do their homework and study away from their depressing living conditions. A harmonium was recently donated so the girls may study traditional Bengali music.
Giffoniello said $150 pays for one child’s annual fees at a neighborhood school.
Volunteers come from all over the world to work at ETC. They include seniors and school children, like the middle school children in Freehold Township, who put together lesson plan materials and have fund-raising events.
"They are going to help with the advertising for the Touch of India Festival," Johnston said. "It started with one person, and look what has happened."
Although ETC needs donations, the organization also welcomes volunteers. Donations may be sent to ETC headquarters in care of Janet Grosshandler-Smith, 7 Ryans Way, Jackson 08527.
For more information, call (732) 901-6733.