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February 11, 2002 New York
Sister Simone Ponnet, who ministers to prisoners and their families in New York City, has been chosen by the citizens of Belgium in a nationwide vote as the winner of their biennial Peace Prize. Sister Simone receives this honor for her work at Abraham House, an alternative to incarceration program in the South Bronx, which today announces the launch of a $5 million capital campaign. Her fellow nominees included a Russian, a Congolese, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and past Peace Prize winners include Mexico Bishop Samuel Ruiz who brokered the peace between the Chiapas and the federal government.
Founded in 1993, Abraham House now serves more than 500 families of prisoners annually, providing counseling (substance abuse, job placement, housing, etc.), food, clothing, emergency services, and a place of community. Its after school program boasts a 100 percent retention rate. Seventy-four ex-offenders, men and women, have graduated from the program and only one person has been re-arrested and sent to jail. This is in stark contrast to the recidivism rate of Riker's Island prisoners, seven out of ten of whom continue their life of crime upon release.
Abraham House truly began more than 30 years ago when Sister Simone Ponnet was a Belgian youngster of 16 sick with a bone disease. Told that she would not live to see her 21st birthday, Sister Simone vowed to God that if she recovered, she would become a nun and devote her life to the poor.
Three years later, out of danger, she joined the Little Sisters of the Gospel, and in 1969 was sent to New York City to establish her ministry. Arriving alone and speaking no English, Sister Simone found work cleaning houses in East Harlem, walking 86 blocks to and from work. She found lodging in a halfway house for women coming out of prison who taught her English as she cared for them. Three months after arriving in New York, two sisters from Sister Simone's order came to join her and all three began working with prisoners and their families. Sister Simone became one of the first chaplains on Rikers Island in the early 1980s. Her assignment: the men's maximum-security unit where violent inmates are in solitary 23 out of every 24 hours. Father Peter Raphael, an old friend of Sister Simone's who was working as a nurse in a Bowery detox program, began to say mass regularly at Rikers. Judges took note of their work with the prisoners and asked Sister Simone and her colleagues in faith to take and supervise prisoners whom the judges felt should not be behind bars.
Although it would not be incorporated or have its name and permanent home for another dozen years, this was the genesis of Abraham House. The first three prisoners were put up in rented rooms in the same building where the Sisters and Father Peter lived-over a soup kitchen in Brooklyn.
It became clear that reconciliation between inmates and their relatives was essential to the prisoners' chances of being rehabilitated. It also became clear that unless the chaplains worked with the whole family, many of the children would end up repeating a cycle begun by their parents.
Abraham House's goal is to break the cycle of crime and poverty that is passed down from grandparent to parent to child. To this end, they offer three core programs: a small, intensive residential program that provides judges with an alternative to incarceration; a family center offering social services to the relatives of inmates and ex-inmates; and an intensive, six-days-a-week, year-round after school program for the children of these families, ages 6-13.
Most of the families served by Abraham House live in extreme poverty and are illiterate in both Spanish and English. Many are immigrants who are forced to subsist on the underground economy, selling seasonal products such as mangoes and flowers in the street. Through its after school and summer programs, Abraham House provides tutoring, academic assistance, arts, recreation, and counseling for kids and their parents.
Abraham House is located in two small adjoining town houses in the South Bronx and there is a severe shortage of space to accommodate the families being served. Sister Simone Ponnet is therefore launching a $5 million capital campaign to raise funds that will enable them to expand their space in order to help more people.
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