Rimma_ZelfandI am tremendously excited to share with you our Annual Donor Listing and Financial Report. I am so pleased to see that after more than a century and a half, we are still being true to our mission of improving people’s lives and helping vulnerable populations.

This year, we took a giant leap forward by expanding our programs into new geographies. We brought Family Table, New England’s largest kosher food pantry, into Canton, along with CHAI Works, our community-based day program for adults with disabilities. We also brought our award winning Lauren & Mark Rubin Visiting Moms®program into the North Shore and Central MA communities. Expanding into new geographies will offer opportunities for participants as well as volunteers, who now have the chance to give their time to these wonderful programs closer to home.

Members of these new JF&CS communities are thrilled about the expanded programs. Congregants at Temple Beth Abraham in Canton, for example, are incredibly enthusiastic about having Family Table right in their own community. They say it gives them the opportunity to engage meaningfully in work that they want to support.

Our goal each year is to help more people in more profound and long-lasting ways. We are constantly surveying the community to discover what individuals and families need most and identifying where there are gaps or unmet needs. We are truly interested in what makes lives better and we listen to our clients to determine where we can make the greatest impact. After speaking with families of children on the autism spectrum, we discovered that having social activities for their kids was of paramount importance. So we secured funding and created a program for kids on the spectrum that will offer optional concurrent programming for parents or caregivers. We have hired a program coordinator and expect the program to be up and running this fall.

As we continue to expand into areas like the North Shore and Central MA, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters, donors, volunteers, and partners who have allowed us to do this and have helped us so generously along the way. With your help, we hope to continue to expand our borders, bringing more exciting and innovative ideas and programming to improve even more lives.

Originally posted on the JF&CS blog.

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