Local School Specializes In Education For Women
May 1, 2008
by Lee Landor, Assistant Editor
Sister Patricia Wachter works with students preparing for the GED exam at the School Sisters of Notre Dame Educational Center in South Ozone Park.
On a quiet residential street in South Ozone Park sits a vintage building. Its modest brown brick exterior is serene, with the exception of a bright blue banner hanging above the door, which reads: “School Sisters of Notre Dame Education Center For Women.” Only the echo of raindrops falling on the stained glass windows can be heard inside the silent school, leased from theSt. Clement Pope parish, located at 120-09 141st St. This is a safe place, where women enter a community of support and encouragement: “It’s a very human environment,” said Sister Jean McLoughlin, the SSND outreach coordinator.
Pictures of smiling women line the walls. It’s proof of the center’s success in achieving its mission to empower women who are “underserved by society,” according to SSND Executive Director Sister Catherine Feeney.
More than 200 women, varying in age from 19 to 70, have passed through the doors of the educational center, each with her own skills, her own story. Many have gone on to better jobs or to college and vocational schools. They’ve become leaders in their families, places of work and communities. Although the women come from various backgrounds and ethnicities, they have one thing in common: their desire to change.
Many of the women never completed high school and come to the center to prepare for the General Equivalency Diploma exam. They spend five hours a day, five days a week for four months or longer studying there.
More than two-thirds of the women are immigrants from Guyana, India and the West Indies, among other countries. They come to the center to take the basic education course, which includes math and literacy skills and meets three times a week.
Others are working mothers or women dependent on public assistance who are looking for better jobs and to “elevate themselves,” McLoughlin said.
Regardless of their status outside the center, which opened in January 2004, inside the school these women are all important and beautiful, McLoughlin added. According to Feeney, the six SSND teachers make sure that each student leaves the center with at least one diploma in hand; a certificate in self-esteem.
With instability in their lives, patterns of quitting school, conditions of poverty and a history of putting themselves last, many of the center’s students lack self-confidence. “They’ve been told they will fail or that they cannot succeed,” Feeney said. McLoughlin added that many “haven’t had figures (in their lives) to invite them to care for themselves.”
The SSND program is there to guide these women, aid them in finding their own sense of empowerment — and they often end up empowering each other. It’s not just about passing that GED exam or learning how to read, the teachers said. It’s about getting them to recognize their self-worth and to focus on their own needs and desires. This will help them break out of the cycle of poverty in which they’ve been stuck most of their lives, according to Feeney.
It doesn’t end there. The center also provides life-learning skills — which include parenting and communication, prevention of domestic violence and conflict management — and an outreach program that networks area agencies to provide resources, like referrals and jobs, for the students.
The non-denominational, nonprofit school, which has about 30 registered students this semester, is funded by private donations and benefactors, and grants from foundations around the city. It collaborates with a number of area organizations, including St. John’s University, the Jamaica Base Homeless Prevention Project and the Catholic Charities of Queens.
The tuition-free center is part of an international congregation of religious women, founded in Bavaria, Germany in 1833 by Caroline Gerhardinger, whose belief that knowledge can transform the world still holds true for the SSND sisters.
“Dreams are realized when people step out in faith to do what needs to be done,” Feeney said. “Education is key to changing a person’s life.”
For more information, call the SSND Educational Center at
(718) 738-0588.