I’m honoured to serve as an Ambassador for Mary Ward International. I graduated from Loreto Kirribilli in 2021, and my years there remain some of the most formative of my life. When I moved to Melbourne for university in 2022, that connection didn’t fade. If anything, it deepened, drawing me toward the wider mission Mary Ward International carries out around the world.
In November 2024, I travelled to Kolkata, India, with my sister, Coco. This trip was inspired by our mother and aunt, who had travelled to Kolkata after graduating from Loreto Normanhurst to volunteer at Loreto Sealdah alongside Loreto Sister Cyril Mooney — a woman whose work transformed education for disadvantaged children in India. Sr Cyril founded the Rainbow School, a program that enabled children from the Kolkata railway station informal settlements to access education. Hearing stories about this legacy throughout our childhood eventually drew Coco and me to follow in our mother and aunt’s footsteps. Upon arriving at Loreto Sealdah, despite being halfway across the world, we immediately recognised the same spirit that defines our own school community. We were delighted to know that more than 30 years on, the Rainbow School is still operating and changing lives.
We spent most of our time with the Kolkata Mary Ward Social Centre, founded in 2014 to extend the Loreto Sisters’ mission to some of the most vulnerable communities in West Bengal. We witnessed real hardship, but despite these challenges, we also saw extraordinary resilience and hope in everyone we met. We visited many projects across the state. One was the I.D.E.N.T.I.T.Y. project, which helps out-of-school children in Kolkata’s informal settlements access education, healthcare, and legal identity support. Here, I taught a young girl to write her numbers for the first time — a small but powerful moment. Another was the Tribal Community Development Project on Gangasagar Island, where we joined a Children’s Rights Week celebration and met a young girl being honoured for advocating against forced child marriage in her community.
These experiences highlighted just how vital the Sisters’ ongoing work is, especially the more recently opened Darjeeling Mary Ward Social Centre, led by Sr Biviyana Lepcha, which is expanding the Mary Ward mission across West Bengal. This is where Mary Ward International’s role becomes essential: the organisation directly supports this work, and funds raised through initiatives like May Day at Loreto Kirribilli help sustain and grow these projects.
As an Ambassador, I now carry these stories forward to help raise awareness and support for Mary Ward International’s mission. The call to serve that I found in Kolkata has stayed with me, and I’m especially passionate about supporting the development of the Darjeeling Mary Ward Social Centre, which continues to advocate for education, opportunity, and hope across West Bengal. It’s a privilege to represent an organisation supporting such meaningful, tangible work in the world, and to continue being inspired by the work of Mary Ward International and the global Mary Ward community.
Harper Gracie was School Captain of Loreto Kirribilli in 2021. She attended the University of Melbourne and now lives and works in Melbourne.
After a life-changing trip to Kolkata, India, to visit the work of the Loreto Sisters, Harper felt called to serve and now proudly takes on the role of Ambassador for Mary Ward International, championing the organisation’s mission to expand education, opportunity, and hope for vulnerable communities around the world.
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