Making a Connection

JFS is here helping those in need in our community every day and our clients are not the only people who benefit from their involvement with our organization. Helping others is a way of life for the staff at JFS, and we find our jobs meaningful and fulfilling. Sharing in our many successes also brings gratitude into the hearts of those that donate their time and resources. One of our kind and generous donors sent us this thought to share with our readers: “Every day I thank God for blessing me with life, peace in my mind and my heart, and the opportunity to share with others. When this is my focus, my heart is filled with joy. I am very happy to offer love and support to all the people who may be helped by my donations to Jewish Family Service. I am grateful for the opportunity to share with and to help others. I thank everyone at Jewish Family Service for all you do to help relieve suffering and to offer comfort and support for those in your care." Gratitude lives in the hearts of all of us and we thank you for being a part of JFS!

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What’s Happening at the JFS Congregate Meal Site?

Seniors 60 years and older - Let’s Have Lunch

We invite you to come and enjoy a hot and nutritious meal at David Specter Shalom House Monday through Friday from 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM. The meal is provided to persons 60 years of age at no charge. Registration is required. Donations are accepted and appreciated to help defray the actual cost of this community service. The meals are also available to people under 60 years of age for a fee. The Congregate Meal Site features “Brain Food” treats every week in January - beginning with berries which are rich in antioxidants and the taste is satisfying and delicious. In February, the Brain Food treat will be a variety of nuts. In March, many varieties of greens will be displayed. Each month we will feature a different Brain Food treat. For more information contact Catherine at 823-1434. Meals are provided by the Department of Senior Services. Participants must be residents of New Mexico. Thank you for your support of this vital program.

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Christus Fund Support of JFS Programs

JFS is thrilled to announce that the Christus Fund (the national foundation associated with Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center) has awarded JFS a grant in the amount of $32,194 make sliding-fee scales available for the in-home Housekeeper/Companion and Honey-Do Home Helper (“handyman”) services we are planning to provide in Santa Fe beginning in early 2012. This is a first time funding award from the Christus Fund to JFS. We wish to thank all of the individuals who helped us submit this winning proposal: first and foremost, our Santa Fe Service Development Champion Sue Bresslauer of Envision Santa Fe; Rabbi Marvin Schwab of Temple Beth Shalom; Colleen Keegan Falcone and Michelle Dube of Open Hands; Lynne Anker-Unnever of the NM Aging & Long Term Services Department; Nancy Arias and Jenny Martinez of North Central New Mexico Economic Development District; Brendalyn Batchelor of the Interfaith Leadership Alliance of Santa Fe; Kristin Slater-Huff of the City of Santa Fe; Sam Sokolove of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico; and JFS friends Halley Faust, Billy Feldman, Steven and Jane Hochberg, and John Brothers. We could not have won this award without your support and are looking forward to working with all of you as JFS expands its innovative in-home services for seniors to the community of Santa Fe.

Diapers In & Diapers Out

With thousands and thousands of diapers donated thanks to realtor Susan Dooreck’s Diaper Brigade for the JFS Food Pantry, you’d think we would be bursting at the seams with boxes and boxes of them! In reality, every box goes to a needy family each week. This month JFS would like to send a special thank you to Manager Maria Bustamante and the Whole Foods team on Carlisle Boulevard for making two donations totaling over 2,000 diapers for babies and toddlers in Albuquerque! Whole Foods generosity doesn’t end there… Nick Martinez from Whole Foods on Wyoming/Academy donated 4,429 diapers and 54 boxes of baby wipes! JFS would also like to thank Karen Ramos of CVS/Caremark, and Target on Montgomery Boulevard for contributing diapers this month. Thanks to the fantastic support of community partners like these, over 13,245 diapers have been donated and lots and lots of little tushies will be dry this holiday season!

Diapers are an ongoing and going and going need if you know what we mean! If you would like to help keep them coming you can drop off diapers at our donation bin at the JCC, or donate securely online by clicking on the Donate button below. We extend many thanks for the diaper donations to:

And community donors like Brian Dooreck & Gila Aloni, Jay Dooreck, Lola & Walter Green, congregants at Congregation Albert, JCC members, JFS staff members and others for helping make this awesome “Diaper Brigade” a success!

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Buena Vista Chair Exercise a Hit!

If you were to visit Buena Vista Active Adult Lifestyle Apartments in Rio Rancho on a Friday morning you would be greeted by upbeat oldies music, an energetic instructor and the lively site of 10 to 20 seniors working out. This is the Buena Vista Chair Exercise class and it has been a forerunner to a wellness movement at Buena Vista that has been steadily gaining momentum over time.

When the JFS Road to Wellness began collaborating with Buena Vista in February of 2010, site lead Marica Martinic found that many residents wanted an easy, accessible fitness class held on site. Her certifications in numerous evidence-based programs including EnhanceFitness, Strong Women and A Matter of Balance, as well as being a certified group fitness instructor gave her the perfect foundation to develop a low impact chair exercise class. She began the intensive endeavor of putting together the program and in August 2010, the Health and Wellness department held their first chair exercise class.

From then on, the activity room where residents sit, drink coffee and play board games is transformed into a “fitness room” every Friday. Residents push tables to the side, arrange chairs and help carry weights from the storage room for class. The class is designed for participants of all ability levels and includes a strength, stretching and a relaxation component. The Road to Wellness staff even puts together occasional specialty workouts that focus on various aspects of fitness such as a very popular balance class and an arm strength class. Holding the class in the main meeting place at Buena Vista is ideal since it provides visibility and encourages residents who are not fitness buffs to sit down, watch and hopefully join.

Since chair exercise began, the Road to Wellness and Buena Vista collaboration has influenced the steady increase of health and wellness activities that take place at the apartment complex. Currently there is daily Wii bowling, monthly gardening club meetings, and a monthly breakfast with guest speakers on wellness topics to name a few. All of these activities complement each other to create a culture of community wellness that makes Buena Vista a pleasure to visit.

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JFS Food Pantry Helps through the Holidays

Thanks to an outpouring of support from our community and the hard work of Community Programs Manager Debbie Garduno, every Food Pantry client received a turkey for Thanksgiving! Several Food Pantry clients told our volunteers what a blessing it was to be able to receive a turkey. One food pantry client called and said that "Thank you very much for the turkey. I was able to share it with six other friends." We were able to give out 79 turkeys this year to the generosity of our donors. Garduno shopped in freezing weather and carried dozens of heavy, frozen turkeys to the Food Pantry to ensure every family received one. It was worth all the hard work when she saw tears well up in the eyes of a man who sought help from the JFS Food Pantry for the first time. He was overwhelmed by the food in the box handed to him to help feed his family.

In addition to a turkey of appropriate size for each family, nearly all the Thanksgiving Food Baskets contained at least one box of stuffing and one to three cans of apple or lemon pie filling. JFS is grateful to Solomon Schechter Day School for donating over 700 pounds of food for the Thanksgiving Holiday plus an additional 354 pounds that came in after the Thanksgiving Holiday for a total donation of 1,063.5 lbs.

Between November 17th and December 8th JFS saw 57 new families come to the Food Pantry. JFS volunteers worked hard to meet the extra need of the new clients and the 27 families requesting emergency food boxes. Emergency food boxes are given to those with an urgent need that are not registered clients or live outside of the Food Pantry’s service area. Need in our community is increasing and this year the JFS Food Pantry has been averaging between 10-20 emergencies and/or new families per week.

JFS is happy to be able to help families such as the Malinda Lopez Family (see photo). Mrs. Malinda Lopez shared, "The Jewish Family Services are a God send. I could thank them & their staff so much they make a big difference for me and my family". Her family members are Karla Chavez, Karina Chavez, and Francisco Chavez.

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Oil Campaign & Food Pantry’s Most Urgent Need

This year’s Chanukah Oil Campaign Goal was to meet or beat last year's 80 gallons of donated oil or about 595 lbs of oil. To date we have collected 6.25 gallons or 25 lbs. toward our goal this year.

The Food Pantry’s most urgent needs for January would be cereal and rice. We hope to collect 250 boxes of cereal and 200-2lb bags of rice. Please bring your donations to the donation bin at the JCC or to the bin located at Congregation Albert. Thank you for helping keep this critical community service going!

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Focus on Fort Sumner

Through the Community Innovations in Aging In Place (CIAIP) Grant, Carrie Hamilton, JFS' CIAIP Project Director, reports progress on Fort Sumner’s community garden project. Project staff coordinated a meeting with Dusti Scovel, CEO of De Baca Family Practice Clinic and Hank Bruce, Horticultural Therapist, of Hunger Grow Away to provide guidance on the implementation of community gardening efforts in Fort Sumner in August. Bruce provided information on the benefits of a community garden outside of nutritional benefits such as a place for renewal through the addition of flowers, shade trees, and areas to sit and relax. Scovel was enthused by the prospect of the gardens providing a place of respite for the Clinic’s patients who have received bad news about their medical conditions.

In late October, Village of Fort Sumner personnel brought in their equipment and laser leveled the garden site located at the De Baca Family Practice Clinic. The boxcar was relocated to the back of the area. They are getting bids on extending a sidewalk and adding a ramp to make the community garden wheelchair-friendly from the front of the building to the garden area. Two school classes will be assisting with building the frames to hold the pods. Requests are being solicited to the community for building materials that can be used for building the pods.

The Clinic’s maintenance worker, Stephen, is building a simple 4’ x 8’ frame that will be used to mark the area to help visualize the garden’s layout and where the walkways need to be built, etc. He is also requesting that the local tree farm owner come to assess the area where fruit trees will be planted to recommend any soil conditioning or other preparations beforehand. See below for a preliminary drawing of the gardens project. For questions about the project you can contact Carrie Hamilton at 505.291.1818.

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Rabbi Min’s Message
In case you are new to our e-newsletter, let me share this explanation for this space of the e-newsletter. The mission statement of Jewish Family Service of New Mexico reads: "Guided by Jewish values, we offer targeted social services that help preserve and improve the quality of life for New Mexicans." What are these Jewish values? How do they help guide the day-to-day work that we do at JFS? When new employees join the staff of JFS, they are introduced to eighteen of these basic Jewish values. (Why eighteen? Because that number is associated with life; the word "Chai" has a Hebrew numeric value of 18.) I’ll introduce these values one at a time, along with a brief idea of how each value informs JFS’ work.

Basic Jewish Values #17 Nedivut - generosity, expansiveness
The Hebrew word, Nedivut, which describes this Jewish value, is derived from the Hebrew root n-d-v, meaning doing something willingly, a voluntary rendering, often described in religious traditions as a “free-will offering”. The same root is used to describe abundance, as when in Psalm 68:9, the Bible mentions plentiful rain. At this season of the year, when capitalism and tradition combine to urge us to spend exorbitantly, it is useful to reflect on what giving generously of our own free will is really about: recognizing our responsibility to share our abundance, feeling gratitude for all we have, and giving from our hearts.

JFS is grateful for all the generosity we have been blessed to receive: the donations of money, in-kind donations, and of creative ideas, the gift of volunteers being willing to share their time, talent and expertise, the contributions of food for the food pantry, cooking oil for the Chanukah oil campaign, diapers for needy families. We are grateful for our treasured partnerships with other organizations across the state, Jewish congregations and non-profits as well as the many governmental and organizational funding groups which support our work. We are grateful for our supportive work environment, in which staff willingly helps each other help the clients we serve. We are grateful to our clients, who teach us every day about the importance of human connection and caring. And, we thank you, the readers of this monthly e-newsletter, for your readership, thoughtfulness and caring.

If you or someone you know could benefit from JFS’ Jewish Community Chaplaincy Services or you would like to view the Grief and Loss Support Group schedule, please visit JFS’ website’s Community Chaplaincy and Calendar pages.

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JFS is a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, a participating agency of United Way of Central New Mexico, and is supported by dozens of other organizations and hundreds of donors. Please visit www.jfsnm.org for more information.

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