Located in the south Bronx's Mott Haven community, Abraham House offers three core programs: a small, intensive residential program for offenders that qualifies as alternative to incarceration; a family center that offers social services to the relatives of inmates and ex-inmates; and an intensive, seven-day-a-week, after-school and summer program for the children of those families, ages 5 to 17.
Robin Hood supports Abraham House’s social services as well as the after-school program.
Sister Simone Ponnet, the executive director of Abraham House, grew up in Belgium. At 16, she fell sick with a bone disease, and her family was told she would not live to see her 21st birthday. Deeply religious, she vowed to become a nun and devote her life to the poor if she recovered. Once out of danger, she joined the Little Sisters of the Gospel, and in 1972 she was sent to New York City to establish her ministry.
She found lodging at a halfway house for women coming out of prison. There Sister Simone learned English and soon was repairing the house and ministering to the needs of the ex-prisoners with whom she lived. She became one of the first chaplains on Rikers Island, the nation’s largest jail. This was the genesis of Abraham House.
By 2005, Abraham House was bursting at the seams. Capital investments from Robin Hood helped Abraham House to build a new 21,000-square-foot building. Now, for the first time, the agency has the space it needs—ample enough to accommodate big crowds on the weekends, with rooms for individual tutoring and a modern kitchen for hot meals. The project combined the old (two cramped brownstones) with the new (a 12,000-square-foot addition).
Abraham House is featured on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Robin Hood Stories. To hear this or other Robin Hood Stories, visit www.sirius.com/robinhood.
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