By Annabelle Allen

The RSHM Life Center (Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary), a community center focused on education and social services located in Sleepy Hollow, celebrated its 25th anniversary in June. With the belief that Learning Is For Everyone (LIFE), the center offers programs and services to the lower income immigrant population of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. The goal of the center is to focus on the needs of each family and help them improve their lives through empowerment.

The celebration was in proper LIFE Center stylenot with cake, not with balloons but by launching a massive service effort. Since March, the center has distributed over 12,000 meals and 14,000 pounds of groceries/produce to vulnerable families, as well as opening one of the only in person day camps in the region so that parents could return to work. Its not exactly how we expected to spend our anniversary summer, said Sister Susan Gardella, executive director and co-founder of the Life Center

Sister Susan is the driving force behind the centers dedication to the community. Gardella is a part of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an international congregation of religious women who have served in the Sleepy Hollow/Tarrytown area for over 100 years. From working with the homeless in Long Island, to family courts in the Bronx, and opening the center in 1995, Gardella has dedicated her life to serving those in need.

She brings unwavering commitment to a world where everyone can have enough, where everyone can get an education, regardless of who they are and their economic status. I think she has been an incredible gift to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, said Fiona Matthew, a grant consultant for the LIFE Center and friend of Sister Susans. She is not good at promoting herself. Thats not who she is. She just quietly gets on with things.

Characteristically, Sister Susan credits her staff for the successes of the center. We have people that have been here for 15, 17 years. Theyre certainly not doing it because theyre making a lot of money. They get it. They see it as more than just a job. Its important for me as director to surround myself with people that get it. I think thats what makes the life center special. The staff care as much about the families as I do.

The program started by asking the question: What can we do for you. Gardella, and her co-founder Sister Betty Kolb, invited the mothers in to talk amongst themselves about the issues affecting them. This eventually became the Parents and Tots Program a preschool for toddlers, with a support component for the parent or guardian who accompanies the child. In the program, the children are immersed in English language lessons and begin to separate from their mothers for periods of time, which prepares them for school. While the children are in their group, their parents have an opportunity to study English and participate in discussion groups that allow them to develop as individuals and provides them with a peer network. Twenty-five years later, Parents and Tots remains one of RHSMs more popular programs.

They set up programs that their families need and theyre always talking to the families and finding out what the need is, said Matthew, Then they adjust their programs, and add more programs on. No big fan fair, no patting on the back. I never see them toot their own horn at all.

Now, Sister Susan and the center are working to pull together an in-person summer camp to help parents find relief after months of online schooling and amidst surging unemployment rates. Most camps in the area have gone remote, as COVID-19 remains a risk, but Sister Susan heard a call from families that parents needed to go back to work and restore their finances.

The Hudson Valley has lost 165,400 jobs for the period ending May 2020, according to The Department of Labor. Still, this number does not account for undocumented workers who dont meet the governments official definition of unemployed. Their families have received zero unemployment benefits during this time. Parents are in a bind, said Gardella, and they have to start getting back into the workforce especially for those who might be undocumented.

Opening camp hasnt been easy. The center must adhere by strict state guidelines for in-person camp during the COVID-19 pandemic: no field trips, no swimming pool, and temperatures must be checked every morning. Instead, the center has converted the parking lot into a space for socially distanced games like jenga and connect four. The camp is now entering its third week, allowing many of the parents to return to work.

Cumulatively, Life Center programs are making a profound difference in the community. Of the 27 most recent alumni of its programs (elementary aged children who remained in the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow school district), 100% graduated from high school in the Class of 2019. The state-wide graduation rate that year was 39% for English Language Learners and 75% for Latinx students. Twenty-three of those 27 students went on to college. One entered the Culinary Institute of America and three students entered the Marines.

The children that enter the program not being able to speak English, within three or four years are in the accelerated programs at school and achieving off the charts, said Matthew. Its crazy the results [Sister Susan] gets.

Matthew has observed that as kids arrive at the Center, Sister Susan will stand outside the building and greet each one personally, ruffling their hair or telling a joke. Shes a lot of fun, a lot of love, but is very parental and very guiding, says Matthew. I think that they count on her. Shes a beacon to them.

Gardella has been a Catholic Sister for 35 years, committing her life to serving those in need. The decision to become a Catholic Sister is one that is difficult to explain, she says, but similar to making any other big decision in ones life. How do you ever really know? It just feels right. It feels like the thing that makes life worth it, said Gardella. People have these stereotypes from years ago of the sister with the ruler or something like that. Were just regular people.

I think that we are put on this earth and given gifts and talents by whomever we feel in our personal beliefs is our creator, she says. And if we dont use them for good, whats the purpose of them? We have an obligation to do whatever good we can. Each of us can do something.

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Heroes: Sister Susan Gardella and the LIFE Center - The Hudson Independent