Sr. Cyril Mooney was born in Bray, Co. Wicklow in 1936. She joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (ibvm), the Loreto Sisters, and in 1956 moved to India, where she worked until her death in 2023. Sr. Cyril is widely known and respected throughout India as a pioneer of quality education and support services for children from poor rural and urban backgrounds.
In 1979 she became principal of the Loreto Day School at Sealdah, Kolkata. During her time there she transformed and expanded the school to ensure access for students from lower-caste and socially deprived backgrounds. Noting the realities of child labour, she advocated for the rights of all children to go to school and exposed the injustices of child labour. She ensured that the children of migrant workers, whose parents worked seasonal jobs in the brick kilns of West Bengal, were able to continue their education through the Brick Field School Project using an open-air truck as a mobile school. Through the Rainbow Program, Sr. Cyril pioneered educational, housing and nutritional support for street children and promoted the programme to other schools across India.
Additionally, Sr. Cyril established the Barefoot Teachers Training Program, to extend educational access and support to young men and women from slums and villages near Kolkata, who lacked basic academic requirements to be admitted to teachers’ colleges and train as teachers. Through the Shikshalaya Prakalpa Programme Coordinated Teacher Training Centres located throughout Kolkota, they trained teachers to provide education to children with no previous access to education. This was supplemented with a mobile library that transported educational reading materials to the teaching centres in the urban slums. Sr Cyril also oversaw the Bhalobasha project, offering housing for older people in need, microcredit programmes, human rights education initiatives and a 24-hour "Childline" telephone service for street-dwelling children in distress.
Sr. Cyril is the recipient of many awards and honours including in 2007 when she was awarded the Padma Shri Award, the Government of India's fourth-highest civilian honour. She has received four honorary doctorates in Ireland, the US, UK and India. She is also the recipient of the Irish Presidential Distinguished Service Award (2013). Sr. Cyril has a PhD in Zoology from the University of Lucknow in India. Sr. Cyril died on 27 June 2023 after a long illness.
The Loreto Sisters are a global, multi-cultural organisation with a presence on 5 continents across 22 countries. See: ibvm.org
