Mother Teresa was born in Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. Her original name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. At the age of twelve, she realised ^that what she wanted to do most of all, was to help the poor. She decided to train for missionary work and came to India at the age of nineteen to join the Sisters of Loretto, an Irish community of nuns with a mission in Kolkata. In 1928 she took her initial vows as a nun.
From 1929 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Kolkata, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls disturbed her. She left the convent school and devoted herself to working among the poor in the slums of Kolkata. She had no money so she started an open-air school for homeless children. Soon she was joined by many voluntary helpers. Help flowed in from various authorities. This made it possible for her to start her own order ‘The Missionaries of Charity’ to love and take care for those persons whom nobody was prepared to look after. Today the ‘The Missionaries of Charity’ has over one thousand sisters and brothers, many of whom have been trained as doctors, nurses and social workers.