Sometimes to have a little good luck is the most brilliant plan. Woody Allen, Crimes and Misdemeanors
PHILANTHROPIST Joyce Zeff rushed to the plate at the top of the 9th inning to keep the VOA kosher lunches at the Loup JCC for the next five years.
JFS will now manage the program.
I believe in angels, JFS President and CEO Yana Vishnitsky told the IJN after an April 3 meeting at the Loup JCC, which had decided to drop the popular senior venue.
I believe in miracles. We have a program!
Vishnitsky says that Zeff, a longtime JFS supporter, called her Sunday morning, April 1, with an idea to save the lunches the only source of social interaction for some elderly Denver Jews.
Joyce said that if I found a few people willing to put money into the program to show their commitment to the community, she will fund it.
Read Andrea Jacobs’ earlier article “Lunch program to leave JCC”
Barry and Gay Curtiss-Lusher, Julie Morse, Charlie Gwirtsman and Nancy Richman, and the Strear Family Foundation (represented by Debbie Aleinikoff) agreed to pledge matching funds.
I call them our four angels, says Vishnitsky, still breathless from this unforeseen resolution to a crisis that plagued Denvers Jewish seniors for several weeks.
A sizable contingent of seniors walked into the April 3 meeting at the JCC armed with petitions and prepared remarks.
When they heard about the donors they were absolutely speechless, Vishnitsky says.
They were so appreciative, so touched. They felt important, not discounted.
It was wonderful.
Vishnitsky was unable to specify the exact amount of money involved in the five-year funding period.
However, the JCC requested a $60,000 allocation from the Allied Jewish Federation for the senior lunch program for 2011-2012.
Supervision, cost and coordination of the senior meals, which will still convene at the JCC, now passes to JFS.
Shalom Cares prepares the food.
VOA subsidizes $7 per meal, and the federation allocates money to Shalom Cares for kashrut supervision and additional Meals on Wheels requests.
JFS is tasked with the cost of set up, transportation, preparation, service, dishwashing and clean up, duties formerly funded by the JCC.
We may tweak staffing for set up and clean up, Vishnitsky says. But the senior lunches will not be interrupted.
Nothing will change for them.
TO the uninformed eye, JFS assumption of a highly prominent role in senior activities at the JCC might seem rather sudden.
But the directional shift actually occurred a year ago with the establishment of JFS at the JCC Colorado Senior Connections.
JFS at the JCC, a partnership between the two agencies, was formed in April, 2011 with a $25,000 grant from Rose Medical Center and $30,000 from the JFS board of directors.
Until last year, the JCC was responsible for all the senior programming at the center, Vishnitsky says.
Then JFS took over, in large part to confirm our commitment to seniors.
JFS has worked with seniors for so many years, she says. We have developed considerable expertise in helping seniors.
Vishnitsky says that the JCC felt senior programming could be operated better by us, and we wanted to grow existing senior services at JFS.
After the implementation of JFS at the JCC last year, JFS started coordinating and administering all senior programming at the JCC.
The JCC continues providing the physical space.
It was a seamless transition, Vishnitsky says.
The VOA kosher lunch program, however, remained an unprofitable JCC-operated expense.
JCC Executive Director Stuart Raynor told the IJN last week that the community center realized it had to cut the senior lunches due to budgetary constraints.
The JCC, JFS, federation, Shalom Cares, Allied Jewish Apartments (AJA) and other agencies struggled to find a sustainable solution that benefited the seniors welfare and peace of mind.
Raynor, who is cognizant that change can be particularly difficult for seniors, couldnt be happier.
Its a good ending, he says. The senior lunch program will continue without disruption.
Thats a good thing for everyone.
BEFORE the donors descended like celestial beings to fix a painfully human dilemma, the majority of seniors felt that the AJA would come to rescue of the senior lunch program.
Their intuition was right on the mark.
We were prepared, if those angels had not come forward, for the program to come here, Michael Klein, executive director of the AJA, told the IJN Tuesday.
We felt that it was too important a program to just disappear.
In our discussions with the partner agencies, AJA said that we would step in and do it.
Even after learning about the donors on April 2, Klein said his board told him that if anything falls through, they would support the programs move to the AJA.
Klein says the relocation would have been relatively simple.
We figured out that since we have a kosher kitchen, we could simply prepare extra food at night and finish it up at lunch the next day. We had great support from Shalom Cares.
To rectify the issue of parking, which is extremely tight at the AJA, the residence set aside 15 parking places behind the west building that would be dedicated to JCC seniors.
Now that the best-laid plans are no longer required, Klein says that other programming options like opening the AJA computer center to seniors at the JCC, which has no computer classes are on the table of possibilities.
The JCC is the hub of senior activities, he says. But there are probably a lot more opportunities for seniors than ever before in our community.
JFS, Shalom Cares, the synagogues, the AJA, were all enlarging senior activities and collaborating on ways to close the gaps.
We are all committed to Jewish seniors in Denver, Klein says.
We worked together before the situation arose at the JCC, and were working together now.
Cathy Grimm, director of the Senior Solutions Department at JFS, is thrilled about the donors, who appeared out of the blue.
A real angel in the community stepped up to the plate, and the others followed.
Asked what motivated them, Grimm can only speculate.
Its my sense that seniors advocated for themselves. They let their voices be heard and the community responded.
It was a great day.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
