Foundling Hospital gets a makeover from area volunteers

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

Chelsea resident Sheryl Kass, a real estate lawyer at the Midtown law firm of King & Spalding, paints a wall at New York Foundling recently as part of a volunteer day at the center.

By Jefferson Siegel

A Chelsea social services agency received a cosmetic touch-up and an emotional boost recently from a dedicated group of lawyers, volunteers and a rebuilding group.

The Foundling Hospital on Sixth Avenue and 17th St., now known as New York Foundling (NYF), provides help for children and adults through a combination of preventive and care services.

The facility’s quarter-century-old Crisis Nursery was showing its age with fading paint and old fixtures. Two groups, “Rebuilding Together,” a Washington-based organization whose goal is to preserve houses and neighborhoods for low-income people, and lawyers from the midtown firm King & Spalding, decided to make the nursery more welcoming.

Volunteers rolled-up their sleeves to clean and refresh the eighth-floor nursery, providing new light fixtures and a fresh coat of paint.

“The Crisis Nursery has been in operation since 1981,” Victoria Pena, the nursery’s program director, explained. “It opened with the idea of a safe haven for when parents are going through a crisis situation...emotional, financial or stressed-out.

“Parents who come to us feel as if they’re losing control and don’t have any other support. We’re that missing link,” she added. The nursery provides those parents with a place to leave children—from infants to age 10—for up to 28 days.

Chelsea resident Sheryl Kass, a real estate attorney at the legal firm, was rolling fresh paint onto a hallway door on a recent Saturday. “I go to an office and work with people who are very privileged,” Kass said as she trimmed a door frame. “Every once in a while, I like to step back and be part of a greater community.”

Some 16 lawyers, nine Rebuilding Together volunteers and four other volunteers chose to spend a long day indoors doing good for the less fortunate. Arriving before 8 a.m., they would rejuvenate the 10-bed nursery.

Beatriz Ruiz, a store planner for Macy’s, summed up the rationale for spending all day inhaling paint fumes. “There is a saying: Everything good you do, you get younger,” she said.

“We’re just trying to give a little back to the community in which we work and live,” said Jack Needham, Rebuilding Together’s New York City president. “We organize groups of volunteers who, in a single day, try to make these facilities brighter and safer.”

New York Foundling makes use of more than 100 volunteers on a regular basis. They play with and read to the children, as well as help with meals and go on field trips. NYF is one of the largest and oldest social service agencies in the state. In the past year alone, it has handled the largest number of adoptions in the city. It’s an admirable goal, as most of those involved are older and harder-to-place children.

NYF also offers a parent help-line, which receives, on average, 180 calls a month.

“I think every family that comes here is a success story,” Pena said. “We’re not here to baby-sit; we’re here to provide social services.”

Funding for the Crisis Nursery supports basic needs. Most of the funding comes from the city, but private donations lag. For information on contributing, call Ginny Keinn at 212-886-4036. Anyone wanting to volunteer can call volunteer coordinator Alan Shatz at 212-886-4039.