Unsung Heroes: Corrine Rasquinha’s work with the abandoned on Mangalore’s streets has earned goodwill and a home for the destitute  

The White Doves destitute home in Mangalore is the result of the trust and goodwill that Corrine Rasquinha, a recipient of the Karnataka Rajyotsava award this year, has earned over the years through her work with the poor and needy.

A political science postgraduate degree holder, Corrine Rasquinha’s social service life began in the mid-1990s when she went around Mangalore’s streets, bus stands, and government hospitals to provide meals for the poor, homeless and ragged people in the city.

“I saw a lot of hunger on the streets. It moved my heart. When we all eat good food, why must those who live on the streets have nothing to eat, I wondered. I began taking 15 to 20 packets of home-cooked food to the streets every day to feed the poor… We now feed almost 200 people on a daily basis,” Rasquinha said.

It was her experience with the poor in the government hospitals in Mangalore in the 1990s that initially motivated Rasquinha – who had also encountered personal problems on the health front several times in her life – to set up a small destitute home in an old Mangalore house.

“There were people who were abandoned in the government hospitals with no money for their medication, nobody to stand by them, nobody to say that they love them or care for them, so I said I am going to do it for them. This is how my little NGO started at the time,” Rasquinha recounted about the early years leading to the creation of White Doves.

Beginning with two people in a small house that was converted into a destitute home, Rasquinha has rehabilitated over 700 people in the last three decades. Initially, there were two homes – one for the men and one for the women and children – and following a land grant by the Archbishop of Mangalore, White Doves was able to set up a new facility in 2019.

“Many of the people on the streets have mental issues. They do not know who they are, where they have come from. We bring them in and give them a lot of love,” Rasquinha said.

The 200-bed White Doves Psychiatric Nursing and Destitute Home in Mangalore currently has 147 psychiatric destitutes and around 34 students from Manipur who have been rehabilitated in the wake of the violence in Manipur.

“What motivates me to do this work is when we see people who are in rags becoming human beings, and when they can go back to their homes. We have reunited 470 people with their homes, which would otherwise have been impossible. Many of these people were considered dead for many years,” Rasquinha said. “It is the love and mercy of God that every time I have faced huge problems, there has been a way,” she added.

“I have brought people from the streets who were nothing mentally and in the lowest phases of their lives. One of my drivers, my carpenter, my tailor, they are all people who were destitutes rescued from the streets. I often tell the local authorities nobody is useless and nobody is beyond repair,” Rasquinha said.

“If you are doing genuine work, people come looking to help you. I have not run short of funds. People observe how you are taking care of the needy. There is a thinking that a destitute home would be very basic. If you see our home, it is a home for people. The cleanliness and service tend to surprise people,” she concluded.