Programs help immigrant women succeed on LI

Blanca Hernandez works in a factory in Farmingdale from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., heads home for about five hours of sleep, and is up by 7:30 a.m. to get her two children off to school.

Then the El Salvador native goes to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Roman Catholic Church in Wyandanch to study English from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., five days a week.

Hernandez, 25, is a student at the Opening Word literacy and job training program - one of two such programs run by the two largest orders of religious sisters on Long Island. For nearly 20 years, the programs - Opening Word, run by the Dominican Sisters of Amityville and The Learning Connection for Adult Education, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood - have been transforming the lives of undereducated and often poor women.

Some students in both schools have so little formal education they must start by learning the alphabet. The programs, which charge only a nominal registration fee, also help teach the women how to navigate life on Long Island. They deal with topics such as health, parenting, domestic violence, income tax and job interviews. Opening Word brings in social workers to address some issues, and also provides preparation for taking the exam to become a U.S. citizen.

"I want to go up in my life," said Hernandez, a Wyandanch resident who has dreams of becoming a secretary but attended school for only five years in El Salvador. "I want to become a better person."

The nuns who teach the program see their roles as helping people improve their lives.

"We really educate the whole woman," said Sister Lenore Toscano, executive director of Opening Word. "For many this is the first opportunity to do something for themselves."

Toscano said her order has always done a variety of work - its first sisters came to the United States in 1853 from Germany to help immigrants - and that she and the other nuns are simply "responding to the needs of the times."

Both programs have waiting lists. Opening Word has about 250 students from 27 countries, from Afghanistan to the Ukraine, though mainly from El Salvador and other parts of Latin America. The program has expanded to three locations, Wyandanch, Amityville and Huntington Station.

It operates with about 15 Dominican sisters, including 10 who are retired teachers, along with 80 laypeople who volunteer as teachers. The sisters recently launched a website, theopeningword.org.

Hernandez, who came to the United States a decade ago, said she realized she needed English to function and thrive here. When she went to teacher conferences at school for her children, she said, she needed a translator.

"I live in America," she said. "I need English. When I go to the store, I need to buy something" and speak to employees in English.

In Brentwood, The Learning Connection has about 260 students, also from a range of countries. It occupies the former third floor dormitory for boarders at the former Academy of St. Joseph.

The staff includes retired Sisters of St. Joseph - some in their 90s - and eight paid teachers supplied by the Brentwood school district.

Sister Kathleen Carberry, director of the program, said many of the students are from El Salvador, who never got an education back home because of the 1980-1992 civil war.

One student, Yadira Macdowall, 37, a native of Costa Rica who lives in Bay Shore, said she is in the program because she wants to improve her English so she can help her children with their homework and talk directly to their teachers. Toscano said the women come to the English programs "with so many concerns and problems. The accomplishments are really incredible. They're really women of courage."