“If there ever was a time in human history to claim and proclaim authentically the Beloved Community, it is now. It is time to cry out hope and meaning, even if it flies in the face of our dominant culture, a culture which often snares us into a net of individualism. As I look to the future of ICS, I still see the Beloved Community.” – Sister Patty Caraher

Sister Patty Caraher wrote these words in 2022, and they are even more relevant today. They reflect not only her vision for ICS but her lifelong belief that hope, courage, and community can transform lives.

During Women’s History Month, we honor her not only as a founder of ICS but as a woman whose leadership and unwavering commitment to justice continue to shape the students, families, and staff. Sister Patty didn’t just help start the school. She helped us understand what kind of community we were meant to be.

More than two decades ago, Sister Patty joined Bill Moon and Barbara Thompson in imagining a different kind of school in DeKalb County, where refugee families were arriving in large numbers, and children often struggled to adjust in traditional school settings. They saw local families longing for deeper connection across differences. And they believed a school could be more than a place of academic instruction; it could be a living expression of what Dr. King called the “Beloved Community.”

That belief became International Community School.

But to understand Sister Patty’s determination in helping to start ICS, you have to look further back.

Long before she came to Atlanta, Sister Patty, a white Sinsinawa Dominican nun and educator, was teaching at an all-Black Catholic school in Alabama, during the height of the civil rights movement. After witnessing the racism her students and their families faced, she became a vocal advocate on their behalf.

After being arrested at a civil rights demonstration, Sister Patty experienced a profound shift in her thinking. Reflecting on that time years later, she told the Global Sisters Report in 2014, “I realized if I was really ready to help, we had to walk in the shoes of the people and take our cues from the people. So, we had to do a lot of listening and a lot of hearing. The best thing we could do was encourage leadership and affirm people speaking out.”

That lesson became practice when ICS began. The founders didn’t start with programs or blueprints; they started with listening. They met refugee parents, heard their hopes and concerns. They built trust family by family. And together, they created a school where half of the students were refugees, and the other half were local children from across the economic spectrum, learning not just side by side, but from one another.

During her time at ICS, Sister Patty worked tirelessly to build a nurturing and inspiring environment for everyone. She helped develop School-Within-the-School, a one-on-one tutoring program designed to help refugee youth acclimate to their new country, and in 2012, she was honored with the Lewis Hine National Award for Service to Children and Youth for her lifetime of dedication to education and social justice.

Sister Patty remained a champion of ICS through the years, continuing to follow along with school events and send words of encouragement from the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters in Wisconsin, where she lived in later years. Sister Patty passed away in 2024, but her spirit lives on in every classroom, hallway, and interaction at ICS.

“The beauty of ICS is its world of differences, which enriches them and all they meet,” Sister Partty shared in 2022. “May they allow the difference to seep into the fiber of their being as they hear from and learn one another’s stories. Above all, may they wrap their arms around one another where they will widen the tent of their beloved community.”

That is Sister Patty’s legacy.

Not just that she helped start a school.

But that she helped start a movement of listening.

Of widening the tent.

Of believing that children from every nation and neighborhood belong in the same classroom, and that they will all be better because of it.