The Institute of the Carmelite Sisters or St. Teresa(CSST)was founded in 1887 by Mother Teresa of St. Rose of Lima(a resident of chennai) in the town of Ernakulam in Kerala. It was a time when the vast majority of people were living in squalor and misery and the poor were compelled to beg on the streets to earn a living. A caste-ridden society was the order of the day. Mother Teresa, an educationists with a spiritual and social trust and great zeal, was convinced that all human beings are children of God, with a right to live in dignity.
With the first foundation, St. Teresa's Convent , Ernakulam , she started a school where all types of students irrespective of their social and financial status, were admitted. In the short of her life as Foundress(1887-1902), she also get up an orphanage for the poor, whom society discarded, and even personally nursed the sick inmates of the convent during the epidemics at that time. A dispensary, Industrial school for the poor, and a Home for the Aged poor were also started. She was a pacesetter, who visited even the prison and attended to the spiritual needs of the prisoners. She brought about liberation from the chains of casteism and poverty.