Diwali is brighter than usual for hundreds of children this year because of a campaign by former students of St Xavier’s College.

Around 800 children from three NGOs and a primary school in a South 24-Parganas village got new clothes, chocolates and other gifts on the college campus on Park Street on Thursday.

The children got dry ration and toiletries as well.

Diwali is on November 14 this year, coinciding with Children’s Day. But such occasions mean little to the children who got the gifts on Thursday.

The recipients included differently abled children and children with cognitive challenges. Most of them hail from underprivileged families struggling to earn two square meals a day. That festivities are a distant dream for the children was not lost on the organisers.

“The feeling of love, care and share, especially to those who require them more, is the true spirit of any festival. This embodies true human values in oneself. We try to inculcate these Jesuit values among our present and past students,” said Father Dominic Savio, the principal of St Xavier’s College, who helmed the distribution of the gifts on Thursday.

Around 200 children came from Paikhala village in South 24-Parganas where St Xavier’s College (Calcutta) Alumni Association runs a primary school.

Paikhala Primary School started its journey in 1999 on a plot of land donated by a resident. Twenty-one years later, around 250 children — from Classes I to V — are enrolled in the school. Most of them are first-generation learners. Their parents are mostly daily wagers, construction and farm labourers. The pandemic has robbed many of their livelihoods.

The distribution drive was the first leg of a special initiative called “Share to Care” that aims to stand by the marginalised children.

Some of the children with their gifts on Thursday Telegraph picture

The former students’ association has organised a series of relief distribution camps in the wake of the lockdown.

“The children were very happy. Their faces were beaming after receiving the gifts,” said an official of Bodhana, an NGO that had brought its kids to the college on Thursday. The 28-year-old institute is home to close to 100 differently abled children.

“We, in St Xavier’s, do not see any barrier of caste, creed and religion in celebration of a festival. We particularly come forward to bring a smile among the marginalised children, so that they feel good, at least during this festive time, and this makes the celebration more meaningful,” Father Savio said.

“The association has been taking up only philanthropic activities regularly during the last eight months for the needy people troubled by the Covid-19 pandemic and Cyclone Amphan. The efforts included bringing back helpless labourers from Dubai and supporting cyclone victims in Kakdwip and helping in the construction of houses in the Raghabpur area of South 24-Parganas,” said Sanjib Koner, secretary of the association.