In celebration of Three Kings Day, a holiday marking the biblical adoration of the baby Jesus by the Three Kings, Mayor Mike Spano’s Hispanic Advisory Board recently selected Queens Daughter Day Care Center as this year’s recipient of its annual gift donation drive.
Joining Spano and the Three Kings was Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who greeted children at Queen’s Daughter Day Care Center, which was founded in 1903 by 18 Catholic women, called Queens Daughters of Yonkers, and has served generations of children for the past 116 years. Almost 100 families and their children were given gifts.
This year’s event is made possible by local community sponsors including Met Life; The Breadwinners; Borrani Realty; Yonkers YMCA; the Charter School of Educational Excellence; White Plains Detective Luis Muniz; Edwin Castillo; Yonkers Police Department Explorers; Yonkers Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants Association President Chris Sapienza; YPC; and the Hispanic Advisory Board.
St. Peter’s School in Yonkers was also the location of a Three Kings Celebration by Obreros Unidos de Yonkers, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, and St. Peter’s-St. Denis Church. The eighth annual Epiphany (Three Kings) Celebration recognized the 2018 accomplishments of Obreros Unidos de Yonkers, and also paid tribute to Maria Lugo of the Mt. Sinai Selikoff Center for Occupational Health, Aurelia Fernández, Organización Las Manos de Arte, professor Jason Parkin and law students of Pace Law School, and Veronica Bazan of the Women’s Enterprise Development.
The event included dinner, entertainment, and the distribution of toys by the Three Kings, Santa Claus and members of the Yonkers Police Department’s second and third precincts. Now entering its 10th year, Obreros Unidos de Yonkers was formally established by Catholic Charities Community Services, Westchester, in an effort to unite and help day laborers who were being discriminated against and not being paid their hard-earned wages by their employers, as well as being robbed or assaulted in the community.
OBREROS has made great strides in protecting, changing policies and empowering more than 500 day laborers living and working in Yonkers. Through OBREROS, workers are educated and informed of their employment rights and responsibilities to prevent exploitation and workplace abuses. Additionally, this collaboration assists in integrating workers into society and providing local resources to assist them in this process. OBREROS accomplishes this mission by hosting presentations and training on worker’s rights, safety in the workplace, immigration rights, and other topics; and issuing membership cards with identifying information that is currently being used by the City of Yonkers as a form of identification.
