OUR
STORY

Deepa’s early childhood education began under the stewardship of the woman who later became known as Mother Teresa. Through her studies, Deepa came to understand that education engenders freedom. She saw that those who are most deprived of education are the most vulnerable.

When Deepa moved to the U.S. to earn her PhD in molecular biology and landed at Cottage Hospital of Santa Barbara to do her work as Administrative Director, Deepa eventually asked herself, much like the great Bengalis that came before her, what kind of world and what kind of India she would leave behind. That is when the dream of PACE Learning Center (PLC) was born. Over the past twenty years, a great deal of Deepa’s time and personal resources have been dedicated to the founding and developing of the PACE Learning Center, born out of a passion to counter-act child trafficking through the education of girls and the empowerment of women.

PACE (Promise of Assurance to Children Everywhere) founder, Deepa Biswas Willingham, was born and raised in Kolkata, India where she found a love for education rooted in her childhood. Deepa’s father, a teacher, and her mother, a humanitarian, risked their lives to harbor Muslim refugees in a Christian college when conflict between Hindus and Muslims broke out in Kolkata in 1946. Their example instilled in Deepa the necessity to respect all human beings, regardless of caste, color, religion or gender.

OUR PARTNERS’ STORY

The Rotary Club of Calcutta Metropolitan (RCCM)  – members of this club have been key to the implementation, success, and efficacy of the magic we call the PACE Learning Center (PLC). The members of RCCM, in particular Rotarian Jayanta Chatterji, provide the honest, local operational and fiscal oversight without which it would not be possible for an US non-profit organization, like us (however well intentioned), to offer its programs in a community suffering from the vagaries of abject poverty and gender biased abuses. With their feet on the ground, we know that every penny we are sending there is appropriately utilized for the benefit of the girls, women, and the villagers we serve. Four of the members of RCCM are serving as Directors on the PACE Board without compensation.

A SCHOOL

IS BORN

In 2003, the two-room rented house in Piyali Junction welcomed 85 girl students in the first six months, and became a beacon of hope and healing for the village. Deepa’s dedicated work at PLC, was developed through the U.S. non-profit organization, PACE Universal which she founded, resulting in the creation of a sustainable rehabilitation model that has gone on to transform the village and community of Piyali Junction, home to most of the students that attend the school.

The development of the day-school was not without challenges, among them clean water to stabilize the health of the community so that the school’s provisions of food, clothing and education could have maximum impact.

Seeing the deficit in so many areas around the school’s community, Deepa spearheaded a collaboration between PACE and a $330,000 Health, Hunger and Humanity Grant from The Rotary Foundation.

With this grant money, and the help of local partner Rotarians, 15 fresh water wells were installed around the village and have subsequently rehabilitated the whole population of Piyali Junction. A combination of clean water, literacy, health and dental care, sanitation, banking and micro-lending, and vocational training all work together to help change the face of trafficking and poverty in that corner of the world.

SECURE THE

LEGACY

Twenty years later the day-school has grown into a fully equipped and environmentally sustainable 3-acre oasis for over 200 girls and women, all gaining an education and vocational training that is really and truly transforming lives.

The mission is still the same:

Educate a girl and you educate a community.

Educated girls grow into educated women who marry later, have fewer children, and then in turn educate their children. Education is the key. It’s a ripple effect. It’s a lifting up. It’s almost imperceptible at first, but overtime it’s undeniable and seen in the healthy smiles and brilliant minds of this next generation. 

Today, PACE Learning Center has realized its first graduates from the secondary school, and is now poised to serve as a model for duplication in other areas of the world.

Make a difference.

We rely on an expanding network of partners like you to keep this dream and beautiful reality alive and thriving. Thank you for making your contribution today.