Sister Carolyn White lives and works on five atolls in the midst of 772,000 square miles of ocean in the Marshall Islands.

Sister Carolyn White was born in Richmond, VA, and received a B.S. in liberal arts from the University of the State of New York. In 1961, she entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation, and after her novitiate, worked in an office at the Center before being assigned to the Maryknoll Sisters Contemplative Community in 1970. Five years later, she was teaching fifth grade at St. Brigid’s School in the lower east side in New York City. Then she was assigned to the Central Pacific region.

From 1977 to 1981, Sister Carolyn served as a teacher and coordinator at Assumption Elementary School on the island of Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Majuro is the district center of the Marshall Islands and boasts an international airport that's the size of the entire width of the island.

From 1982 to 1986, Sister Carolyn took courses in special education and taught emotionally disturbed children in Honolulu, Hawaii. Then she returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York to spend four years sharing her talents in the Treasury Department, returning to the Marshall Islands in 1991 to work in the “outer islands" of the island nation.

Important to any understanding of life in the Marshallese outer islands is that they are small and scattered. The population of the Marshalls is 56,000, scattered over 32 atolls, which is 70 square miles of land amidst 772,000 square miles of ocean. Each atoll is the coral growth atop an underwater volcano.

Sister Carolyn is one of two Maryknoll Sisters who visit five of the atolls on a rotating basis and stay there for varying lengths of time. These islands are smaller and less populated, and a priest can only visit a few times a year. Their ministries are primarily educational with an emphasis on Christian education and the development of teaching skills among Marshallese teachers and catechists.

Sister Carolyn also helps promote the raising of chickens and native foods and teaches budgeting, cooking and emergency medical care.

Usually they don’t have electricity except for some islands that now have generators and solar power. For communication with their Maryknoll Sisters in Majuro they use a shortwave radio. After all these years in mission they are very much at home on the sea and these “island dots”.