Missionaries of Charity was to care for (in Mother Teresa's words) "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It began as a small community with 12 members in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and today it has over 4,500 Sisters running orphanages, home for those dying of AIDS, charity centres worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine in Asia, Africa, Latin
Scudder family of missionaries in India a child in India, she saw all too much famine, poverty and disease. After a Massachusetts seminary, Ida expected to get married and settle down in the U.S., but, in her early 20s, Ida Scudder went back to India to help her ailing mother at her mission bungalow at Tindivanam. Ida Scudder took her M.D. at Cornell University in 1899, then headed back to India, fortified with a $10,000 gift from a Manhattan banker. With the money, she started a tiny clinic for women at Vellore, 75 miles from Madras. In two years she treated 5,000 patients. Ida S. Scudder