Loving wife, mother and dedicated social worker, Rati Forbes fits every one of her roles to perfection
Loving wife, mother and dedicated social worker, Rati Forbes fits every one of her roles to perfectionWhat can one say about a woman like Rati Forbes? That she is selfless, gracious, caring and kind. That she is a loving wife, a great mother and a dutiful daughter. Unfortunately, a finite number of words will not do her justice.
Her mother was one of Mumbai's most eminent paediatricians and her father was free India's first and youngest commerce minister. With a lineage like that, it is no wonder that Rati Forbes nee Bhabha epitomises compassion.u00a0
Her father, Cooverji Bhabha, was a well known philanthropist in the Parsi community and her mother volunteered in a clinic for underprivileged children once a week. From the age of 15, Rati was involved in social work. She read to a neighbour who was slowly going blind, for almost seven years, volunteered at an organisation called Samaritan and at Xavier's college was involved in the social service league.
After college, she put her language skills to use and worked with Swiss Air for almost seven years before getting married and moving to the city in 1986. As a member of the illustrious Forbes family, she became involved in their philanthropic causes.
The family ran a hospital and looked into the welfare of the wives of their shop floor workers. Rati made it a point to talk to the women and understand their issues by visiting their lower-middle-class homes. She realised the need to build the self-confidence of the women by empowering them with financial independence so theyu00a0 need not to rely on their husbands. She started a small-savings group for the women, acting as a catalyst until the women took charge of making changes. The women have now become local leaders.u00a0 "Recently they talked the corporation into changing the route of the local bus so they do not need to walk 3.5 kilometre everyday," says Rati proudly.
Working with women invariably means working with children. Rati got involved in education initiatives. Currently she has three main focus areas: education, working with women and the girl child and community health.
In education, the school library programme run in 101 PCMC schools is their flagship initiative. Research showedu00a0 most school libraries were inadequately stocked, contained age-inappropriate books and library period was generally treated as free time.u00a0
Rati and her team worked with class teachers and also recruited young mothers and girls from the community with some ability to engage children, to do a bit of story telling, play word games, Chinese whispers and generally encourage the reading skills of the children. They run a life skills education programme, Tarang, in low-cost private schools teaching the youth about HIV, STD and other relevant issues.
In the field of health, they run their hospital where, apart from basic care, they provide services which other hospitals do not provide to low-income families. They have tied up with major hospitals and eminent doctors to come and treat patients, such as Dr Parag Sancheti for orthopaedics. They also run an outreach programme with the help of KEM Hospital for children with learning issues. Child counselling is offered once a week by KEM and there has been overwhelming response to the initiative.
They have almost 200 small-savings groups where women, such as widows and abused women, are trained in skills to earn money. They make gift items, snacks andu00a0 stuff envelopes for corporations. "They may be illiterate in the conventional sense, but these women have a depth of wisdom. I think I've grown hugely as a human being," says Rati. "It is amazing to see how thousands of lives can be positively affected with a small amount of money."
Rati plans to spend more time focusing on her work through the foundation. She considers herself lucky because of the unstinting support she gets from her husband and in-laws.
Her children are also supportive. Daughter Rhea is her sounding board and son Darius has worked on some initiatives for her.
As if she is not busy enough, Rati is now working on a book on her father, in memory of what would have been his 100th death anniversary.
As for leisure, she loves travelling and spending time with her husband and kids. She also has a passion for singing in the choir.
As I said before, what can I say about a woman like Rati?
