For many, there would be no Thanksgiving dinner without the sisters’ guiding hands.
“If it wasn’t for the sisters … they’re miracles — they are,” said Tammy Dailey, 42, of Dunbar Borough, who gets food from the pantry at Rendu Services every month.
In 1999, the Daughters of Charity Northeast Province was looking for ways to serve the poorest communities.
“We were challenged by our province to really dream so this was a dream project,” said Tuley, Rendu’s executive director.
The nuns went searching for rural areas with high poverty rates.
“The group that came here to Fayette County really studied,” Tuley said. “It’s one of the poorest in the Northeast. We felt we wanted to try to make a difference in people’s lives.”
In Fayette County, 18 percent of residents live below the poverty level, and the child poverty rate of 30 percent is the highest in the state, according to the Fayette County Community Action Agency.
In June 2000, four Daughters of Charity arrived in Fayette County to start Rendu Services — named for a French nun who worked with the poor of Paris — and it was officially incorporated the following year. Three of the original nuns remain — Tuley, Sister Mary Fran Bassick, who runs the after-school program, and Sister Ellen McElroy, who is a caseworker.
