The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd was founded in France in 1835 by St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier. She was born on 31st July, 1796 in France. She was gifted with a deep love for humanity and she revered each person in her/his uniqueness. The socially marginalized young girls and women of her time, found in her a loving mother and teacher. By the time of her death on 24th April, 1868 she had founded 110 convents across the world, including one in India in 1854.
The Sisters of the Good Shepherd set foot in Bangalore on 14th August, 1854 to witness the Merciful Love of our Shepherd God through the Mission of Reconciliation.
Five decades ago, we became more aware of our target groups in all our ministries viz., the dalits and tribals, the disadvantaged and the marginalized. Therefore, we opened small communities in the rural set up. We had initiated the Integrated Development of Dalits and Tribals, through education, health care and formation of self-help groups. We have taken up programmes for street children, migrant workers who live in slums, child labourers, commercial sex workers, domestic workers and prisoners. We believe that through children, social transformation can take place faster. Therefore Children’s Parliaments are also introduced. Through sponsorship programmes, more than 2000 families are supported for education, health and nutrition. Neighbourhood networking is another strategy which strengthens the people in rural areas to deal with their own issues.
In the past 159 years, we have functioned as one Province, viz., Province of India/Nepal. In order to be more effective in our Ministries and for easy administration, we created two new Provinces namely Province of South West India and Province of Central East India/Nepal and the first Province Chapters were held in January 2014.
The Province of Central East India / Nepal is made up of all our communities in Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telengana and Nepal. We have Education, Health Care, Residential Care and Social Action Ministries.
We continue to share the agony of the marginalized and the vulnerable people and many of our sisters live among them courageously, crossing the socio-cultural boundaries.