CALCUTTA, India -- Frenchman Thierry Darnaudet, who has set up a home for street kids in the Indian city of Calcutta, says his dream is to be able to feed all the starving children who live on the pavements, railway stations and slums.

Four years ago, he bought a two-story building in southern Calcutta's residential Lake Gardens area to provide refuge to some of the many orphaned or disadvantaged children in the city, AFP reported.

"I have now 72 children. The youngest one is six months old and the oldest 25," he said.

Darnaudet, with the help of a small staff, provides food and clothing for the children, who would otherwise have nowhere to live, and pays for their uniforms and education in local government or private schools.

"Though not in a big way, funds for the home have started pouring in. For the past two years, a Spanish organization Global Humanitaria, has been offering financial support," said Darnaudet, 39.

"But I would like to help many more," he added.

Twenty years ago, he left his home in the French spa town of Dax, with a zeal to see the world and help people.

He worked in Paris for a nongovernmental organization but satisfaction eluded him.

"I was frustrated with the job and I arrived in Calcutta on Christmas Eve, 1998, where Mother Teresa sacrificed her life to caring for the dregs of humanity -- the dying, decaying and dispossessed. "But I was surprised to see that life was not as grim in the city of joy as portrayed by some novelists and films in the West."

Darnaudet worked with Mother Teresa's nuns, the Missionaries of Charity, for six months helping the poor. But he said differences soon surfaced.

"I was deadly against conversion of religion. But Mother Teresa and other Christian congregations were in favor of conversion," he said.

"She did not like my stand. But though she was never nice to me, she did not behave rudely.

"Disillusioned with the Mother's charity works, I wanted to leave the city, but the hapless, naked children living in the maze of lanes and around my guest house forced me to change my plan," he explained. "I was appalled when a group of wide-eyed, hungry street children with empty bowls in their hands surrounded me, addressed me as Uncle and begged for food."

Soon afterwards he founded an NGO called "Uncle" in Paris and raised money from his own country to feed street children every noon on the pavement by the Indian Museum at Esplanade, the business hub of Calcutta.

"But I felt that I was giving food for their body, not for their soul and the feeling fuelled my passion to collect about a dozen children from the city’s railway stations and pavements and put them in a boarding house and send them to school." Then he went even further and decided to buy the house in Lake Garden to provide them with a home.

Darnaudet said his only ambition now was to see all the children at the home settled with good jobs.

"The children are being trained in computer applications and to speak good English so that they can get jobs. Already some of my boys have got assignments in Cyprus and Dubai," he said.

The Frenchman said he hoped Hollywood star Nicole Kidman might pay a visit to the home one day.

"I am a great fan of the academy award winning actress. I have watched her film "Moulin Rouge" 19 times. "I also took the children to a cinema hall so that they could enjoy the movie. I would love to see Kidman as a visitor to my home."