Sister Doreen Longres, M.M., a longtime advocate of environmental concerns and a founder of Maryknoll Sisters Environmental Office, is one of 12 Maryknoll Sisters celebrating her 50th year in the congregation.

One of two Maryknoll Sisters who helped carve out an easement of the Sisters’ property near Ossining, N.Y., making it forever wild this past year, Sister Doreen entered the Maryknoll Sisters at their center in Maryknoll, N.Y., from St. Patrick’s parish, L.I., in 1962.

Born in the Bronx, Sister Doreen grew up in Ozone Park, attending Nativity B.V.M. parish. She graduated from Bishop McDonnell H.S., Crown Heights, and earned a bachelor’s degree in community service from Mary Rogers College, Maryknoll.

While engaged in community development and adult education in Juli, Peru, 1971-84, she encountered the Aymara people, who would cultivate in her a deep passion and concern for the environment that would weave itself throughout her ensuing years as a missioner. In 1974, she began work with the Institute of Rural Education in Juli, serving with them until 1982.

At the end of 1982, she became involved in human rights efforts and pastoral work in Mocachi, Peru, serving as the congregational regional coordinator in 1984. In 1986, she was appointed to serve on the Latin America desk in the congregation’s Office of Social Concerns at the motherhouse, a position she held for three years.

She returned to Peru in 1990, working at Villa El Salvador in Lima, from 1990 to 1996. She returned to the center in 1996, where she served as a special needs aide in the congregation’s outpatient clinic until 2003. From 2003 to 2012, she helped develop what is now the Maryknoll Sisters Environmental Office. Under her leadership, an easement comprising over 42 of the Sisters’ 67-plus acre property was set aside to remain forever wild in April, 2012.