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Phil Noel/Staff photographer Top, Jean Fredericks, of the Caroline House, reads to day-care children at the home in Bridgeport. Below, from left, Caroline House Director Sister Ann Moles and Sister Danielle O'Sullivan relax beneath the Caroline House quilt.
All around us are people in need. You may see them in your downtown, down on their luck, out of work or perhaps dealing with a mental or physical handicap. Others are not so visible. Call them the working-poor, if you choose. They hold onto a job, a home, but need help with food, clothing, fuel or some other aspect. Their ranks are growing. In our community, people are committed to helping, not just in this Season of Giving, but all year. A series of articles, beginning today in the Connecticut Post, will show what some are doing -- and what you can do to help.

BRIDGEPORT -- For Amarilys Rodriguez, who left Puerto Rico for Connecticut four years ago, helping her 2-year-old son with his learning disabilities was not easy.

That's because Rodriguez, 22, barely speaks English and "not everyone is willing to be a translator for you," the young blonde said in Spanish. So when someone at the Optimus Health Care Center on East Main Street told her about the Caroline House on Stillman Street, where both she and her son could obtain the services they needed, she jumped at the chance.

Connecting mothers with their children is one of the key goals of the Caroline House, which is run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

"We have a really strong mother/child program," said Sister Ann Moles, executive director at the Caroline House. The women attend classes from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, while the children are cared for in one of two play rooms

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in the building.

"You're teaching the moms and helping them teach their kids and advocate for their children," said Mary Ellen Gavin, development director for Caroline House.

"The kids never hear Spanish" in the day care, said Sister Moles. "By the time those kids leave here they can be put in a mainstream kindergarten."

Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University students serve as volunteers in the day-care center and even help with the tutoring.

On Fridays, the

Phil Noel/Staff photographer Sister Mariano Pardo helps Ester Ruiz with reading at Caroline House in Bridgeport.
women attend a Life Skills program, in which the SSND provide speakers or activities to inform the women about different topics important to the women, like breast cancer.

The Caroline House was founded in 1995 by a group of SSNDs who converted the yellow Victorian -- donated by longtime city resident Alice Simon for the purpose of educating the community -- into a nondenominational educational center.

"If we push being Catholic here we don't get grant money," Sister Moles explained. The school is funded by private grants and donations.

Several years ago a $90,000 addition was built, which brought the total number of classrooms to four and allowed room for several small offices.

"When we came to the United States we came for immigrants and now we do the same thing," said Sister Mariano Pardo, who teaches fourth-level English.

Although most of the women in the center hail from Central and South America, there is also a woman from China and the nuns are expecting a Rwanda native to join them next year.

"Our community started in Bavaria, Germany, in 1833, and at that time only rich women could be educated," said Sister Moles. "We [now] have sisters in 36 countries throughout the world."

On Oct. 24, the SSND celebrated their 175th year anniversary. The order established its mother house, Wilton's Villa Notre Dame in 1958, according to Sister Kay O'Connell, an assistant in communications and former administrator.

When the order began most nuns wore the traditional habit, a long black robe with a head covering. When the Vatican Council II went into effect four decades ago, though, nuns were allowed to dress in normal street-wear and the habits were mostly abandoned. The nuns now carry, or wear, a nickel-sized pin containing a cross and the letter M, for the Virgin Mary, as an identifiable way to distinguish them as an SSND, said Sister O'Connell.

Most nuns also live in apartments near their sponsored settings instead of in convents, which churches now use for social services.

"Our numbers are going down, we're diminishing, because we're not getting vocations," said Sister Moles. Only three women are training as novices this year, she said.

Before working at the Caroline House, some of the sisters worked in similar programs in other countries.

Sister Pardo, for example, who is Italian and does not speak Spanish very well, taught English in New Jersey and Puerto Rico. "We are not so much in the schools anymore as we are in these sponsored settings," she said.

Others, like Sister Moles, were involved in religious education programs in churches. In the 1990s, Moles was in charge of the religious education program in St. Charles Borromeo Church on East Main Street.

The SSNDs, who are all college-educated, use their previous experiences in other communities and settings to help the women with things other than English.

Sister Irene Hughes talks to her second-level English class about different countries and even has an assortment of maps in her classroom.

Others, like Sister Ellen Fitzsimmons, help her students with job applications.

One of the best things the women get from the Caroline House are things you can't teach though, said Sister Connie Carrigan.

The women at the Caroline House not only obtain an education and the ability to help further their children's educations, they also meet women who share their own experiences, fears and language.

"And this too is as big a delight as learning English because they get friends," said Sister Carrigan.

For Ana Mercado, 43, learning English at the Caroline House, has definitely allowed her to become a better friend -- to her children.

Before attending the Caroline House, Mercado only knew the basic English taught during her schooling in her native Dominican Republic, while her 15-year-old and 10-year-old children only speak broken Spanish.

Now, "they help me with my homework," she said. And "when they talk to their friends or visitors [in English] I can understand what they are saying."

The needs of various agencies differ. Caroline House would most benefit from monetary donations and from supermarket gift cards that clients can use. Caroline House is

located at 574 Stillman St. in Bridgeport. For more information on how you can help, call Caroline House at 334-0640.

If you'd like to have your effort listed here, please let us know who you are, what you do and how others can help, with money, clothing, food, volunteer hours or in some other way. Please send your contact information to Managing Editor Michael J. Daly at mdaly@ctpost.com or at 330-6394.