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IN HER FIRST JOB at Good Shepherd Services in New York City, house mother in a foster care setting, Sr. Paulette LoMonaco cooked individual breakfasts for the young women in her care. Today, more than a quarter of a century later, you might still find her doing that in her usual upbeat, twinkle-in-her-eye fashion. But now she is also the Executive Director, close to the young people, living in one of the agency’s residential centers and subject to all the day-to-day vagaries of dorm life.
Yet even a short list of Good Shepherd Services’s accomplishments over the 28 years of
Paulette’s tenure reveals that for someone so unassuming, she possesses an extraordinary drive to find new ways to help the growing population of adolescents and young adults in New York City who lack jobs, education, literacy, or safe places to live. Under her care, the agency has evolved into one of the largest, most-respected youth agencies in the metropolitan area, with a budget of $60 million and a wide range of critical services.
One innovation is the Chelsea Foyer at The Christopher, the first-ever implementation in the U.S. of a highly successful European model. The program unites housing, job training, case management, education, and life-skills training in a single setting for 40 young adults. And it represents acollaboration between GSS and Common Ground Community, an agency specializing in housing for the homeless.
Another is the two “transfer schools” GSS has developed in partnership with the city in Brooklyn, combining principles of youth development with best teaching practices to help overage youth complete their high school education. GSS spent years developing the underlying model; now, the Gates Foundation is supporting construction of additional schools, GSS is helping other agencies create schools of their own, and the model is being adopted nationwide.
Key to such achievements, say those who know Paulette, is her warmth, her easy manner with both youth and colleagues, and not least her wry sense of humor: she has been known to joke that when she first took over as Director, she was so unskilled with finances she had to count on her fingers.
Her motives remain as simple as a sandwich or a home-cooked breakfast: “Today, so many young people grow up without the support of strong family ties and relationships. I was blessed with those things in my own life, and I want to extend that blessing to others.”
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