Ronke Afolabi, a Jamaica resident, reads a social studies text book during a GED class at School Sisters of Notre Dame Education center in Woodhaven. Forum Newsgroup Photo by Luis Gronda.
For the past eight years, a Woodhaven-based school has offered women a second chance to better their educational skills in hopes of improving their lives and the lives of their families.
The center will have a dinner and fundraiser on Tuesday, May 8, so that it can keep running for another eight years.
The School Sisters of Notre Dame Education Center, located at 87-04 88th Avenue in Woodhaven, hosts GED, or General Educational Development and English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for women that are looking to either to gain the GED diploma that they don’t have because they did not complete high school or improve their English language skills so that they can better communicate in a language that’s not their native tongue.
Sister Catherine Feeney, Executive Director of the Education Center, said that coming to the center not only allows women to gain the skills they want to better their lives, it also allows them to make friends with the other students and build camaraderie with their peers.
“We witness a unity in a divided world,” Feeney said. “We try to make the center a holistic place.”
Part of how the center has that unity is what Feeney called “non-domination prayer time,” which allows the women, many of whom have different religions, to pray for whatever religion they worship. She also said that the women in their school are great at supporting each other when they need it.
“There’s no competition at the center, they don’t compete against each other,” Feeney said.
She added that the women often bring in food from their native country so that the rest of the students and the teachers could eat a new cuisine that they haven’t tried before.
Deokie Roopnarine, a native of Trinidad &Tobago who has lived in Ozone Park for 11 years, is enrolled in the school’s GED class.
Roopnarine said that she intends to get her GED diploma so that she could enroll in a physical therapy course and get a license in that field. She had previously been a home health attendant, but sees herself as an ambitious person. She said this is an opportunity to have a better job for herself and help her family out financially. The course requires that you have a high school or GED diploma to enroll, but right now, she doesn’t have either.
Roopnarine said that she feels that there is a feeling of a close-knit community in the school and that is, in large part, due to the sisters that teach at the center.
“They organize everybody as a family,” Roopnarine said referring to the sisters.
She has been enrolled in the GED class since February 2011 and intends on taking the GED test in June. Roopnarine, like everyone else at the school, must first pass a test given by the center’s staff to be eligible to take the GED class.
As for Feeney, she said that the biggest joy of her job is seeing many of the women at the center achieve the goal that they set. She has seen many students overcome obstacles and get their GED or pass their ESL class. Feeney added that she has learned a lot of being around the students.
“You can’t be with them and not be changed,” Feeney said, who teaches reading and literature at the center.
The school holds its classes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays through Friday. You have to be at least 19 years old to be eligible for enrollment.
The education center is also having a fundraiser to help cover their costs.
The event will be on Tuesday, May 8 at Roma View in Howard Beach. It will start at 6:30 p.m., and will feature New York Times best-selling author Adriana Trigiani, who will be signing copies of her book “The Shoemaker’s Wife.”
It costs $75 for one ticket to the fundraiser, which includes wine, dinner and a copy of the book. You can also enter a raffle for plane tickets for Alitalia Airlines and a trip to any country in Europe.
By Luis Gronda
