JFS Perspectives

We had quite an eventful week at Jewish Family Service and SHALOM Denver! While there are always exciting things happening in our agency on a daily basis, below are a few things we think you'll especially enjoy:

Yesterday, CBS4 Denver aired an inspirational story about the wonderful work SHALOM Denver does to help transition people from welfare to work. View this story and learn more about the program!  Thank you to Xstatic Public Relations for working with CBS4 and our staff to get this story on TV!


Heidi Pittaway, who is featured in the CBS4 story, with her daughters

Also yesterday, BBYO hosted a pre-screening of the popular movie The Hunger Games for Jewish youth in 6th-12th grade. To show that "hunger is not a game," the teens had to bring at a minimum of three canned food items to benefit the JFS Weinberg Food Pantry for admission. And in the spirit of the competition shown in the movie, BBYO had a contest to see which of their chapters would bring the most food. In total, the teens collected 2,200 pounds of food for our pantry! Thank you to everyone who participated and helped make an incredible impact on the lives of people who are in need.


Teens contribute food to their chapters' food bins at the theater

Earlier this week, we said goodbye to Amy Wood who left JFS after nearly 20 years of involvement with the agency. Amy actually started as a JFS board member in 1996 and held various positions including volunteer, intern, case manager, Family Safety Net program director, and finally government and community affairs director. We had a great party to toast (and roast) Amy and her love of flip charts, decision trees, and Venn Diagrams! Her energy, talent, and dedication will be missed!


Shelly Hines, Family Safety Net director, with Amy Wood


Amy's Tenure Timeline posted at the party in honor of her love of flip charts

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

This week, we received some beautiful baskets of food and toiletries from the sixth grade religious school class at Congregation Beth Evergreen. Nineteen students bagged rice and held a food drive for items needed in the Weinberg Food Pantry. In honor of Purim this week, they made cards and put the items into colorful baskets.

Thank you to Gareth Heyman, a longtime supporter of JFS and member of Beth Evergreen, for connecting their religious school with our volunteer department for this project!

If your family or group is looking for some fun, easy ways to help JFS, check out the Family and Group volunteer page on our website and contact Nancy Benyamin, director of volunteer services, at 720.248.4642 before starting your project.

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

 

'Tis the season for food...lots and lots and lots of food! While most of us are looking forward to enjoying a nice holiday meal next week, some will have to go without. In an effort to make sure that doesn't happen for our Weinberg Food Pantry clients, we asked for your help...and you didn't let us down! We are happy to report that we met our monetary goal. Thank you to all those who contributed! This will help us distribute food for Thanksgiving meals to more than 100 families next Wednesday.

In addition, we are working hard to keep the Pantry shelves stocked through the winter holidays with some help from our volunteers. Earlier this month, 14 employees from CenturyLink spent four hours turning thousands of pears into pear sauce at the LDS Cannery for our Weinberg Food Pantry. Jessica Paul, Family Safety Net coordinator, says, "The CenturyLink employees have a day each year where they go out and volunteer, and several of them picked JFS and hope to do it next year."

 

And then this week, Cooking Matters came to demonstrate how to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins using the pear sauce as a substitute for oil. Our Pantry clients got to sample these muffins and take a bag of the ingredients that included the recipe!

In other Food Pantry news...

Thanks to Steven and Sheila Higgins, who own a well-organized store full of tabletop games and supplies called Total Escape Games. On November 5, they hosted and helped organize a special game day and food drive for JFS, with the proceeds and canned food going to the Weinberg Food Pantry. They were able to collect 60 pounds of food and raised $372 in donations, which also included a generous personal donation.

Thanks to everyone for supporting the local community and helping us in the fight to end hunger!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

 

On Sunday, November 6, Jewish Family Service (JFS) participated in the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly (GA) Day of Service, in which hundreds of Jewish young professionals conducted hands-on service projects benefiting approximately 20 different charities in the Jewish community and the greater Denver community at-large. JFS hosted two different projects – challah baking with the Jewish Disabilities Network (JDN) at the University of Denver Hillel house and rice bagging at JFS for our refugee mental health clients.

Before volunteers dug in to each project, JFS staff spoke briefly about our agency and showed our most recent video so that participants understood a bit about the organization and who we serve. The volunteers and the agency benefited greatly from both projects!

At the Hillel house, five GA volunteers partnered with five JDN clients and their family members to make challahs that were then served at SHALOM Denver the next day at lunch time, which was a big hit! They also made extra dough for the Group Home to freeze and serve for upcoming Shabbat dinners.

Approximately 40 volunteers bagged 500 pounds of rice at JFS to be distributed to refugee families. When they were finished, they helped sort food to be placed on the Weinberg Food Pantry shelves.

Thank you to all of the dedicated volunteers and staff members who made this day a success!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

Thank you to everyone who donated food to the Weinberg Food Pantry during our High Holy Day food drive! Congregants from the following synagogues donated nearly 12,000 pounds of food: B'nai Chaim, Beth Evergreen, Hebrew Educational Alliance (HEA), Rodef Shalom, Temple Emanuel, Temple Micah, and Temple Sinai. Your generosity is greatly appreciated by those in need!

After the food is donated, it takes a team of people to help sort it all to be placed on the Pantry shelves. With a little help from our staff, volunteers from HEA's JConnect group as well as Bar and Bat Mitzvah students and their parents, spent a Sunday morning organizing all the donations. We know it's a big (and dirty) job and we greatly appreciate the help!

 

And now that this food drive is over, we're starting to collect for Thanksgiving to help feed families who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy a holiday feast. If you are interested in helping this cause, please contribute any of the following items or provide a complete holiday meal for one family (the average cost is $36): Frozen turkeys, gravy mix, sweet potatoes, canned cranberry sauce, canned pumpkin pie filling, stuffing mix, canned vegetables, instant mashed potatoes, aluminum foil roasting pans, and grocery store gift cards.

Because we can stretch your dollar by purchasing items at a reduced cost, we prefer cash donations. Please donate now (indicate "Holiday Meals" in the "Tribute Text" box) or bring food donations to JFS, 3201 South Tamarac Drive in Denver, by Wednesday, November 16.

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

You may have seen Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill employees with their mobile "Soup Kitchen" around town lately sampling their new soups. They are doing this to introduce their Soup for Soup Exchange happening this weekend.

For this promotion, you can bring a can of soup (or canned good) to a Denver area Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill October 21-23 to get a free cup of soup. Denver donations go to the Jewish Family Service Weinberg Food Pantry!

This morning, Garbanzo employees brought soup to the Weinberg Food Pantry for our clients to taste since we are a recipient of this food drive. The soup was a big hit and you can taste it this weekend when you bring in a can of soup to any Garbanzo location!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

 

When Azteca Ranch Market recently closed its Denver location, the store owner, Hermine Blau, generously donated 9,000 pounds of food and other products to the JFS Weinberg Food Pantry!  Staff members from the Family Safety Net department took several trips to the store and spent about 24 man-hours to empty the shelves.

We received a variety of items including baby food, juice, paper products and cleaning supplies, tortillas and tortilla chips, cereal, cultural and ethnic foods, and more. To put 9,000 pounds in perspective, the Food Pantry averages about 18,000 pounds of donated food each month from  various grocery stores.

Shelly Hines, Family Safety Net director, says, “This was a very significant donation. With all of the cuts in federal and state funding, we couldn’t operate at our current level without the generosity of our donors. As the need for food has increased, we have had to think creatively about new sources for nutritious food. This donation included all the quality foods we like to put on our shelves and well as a variety of fun extras that we don’t usually have. We appreciate the generosity of the store and the abundance of the donation!” 

 

The JFS staff helped sort the items and we have already distributed more than half of the food to our Food Pantry clients. Now we are gearing up for our Thanksgiving food drive - look for more details coming soon about how you can help!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

When our Weinberg Food Pantry operations coordinator, Chad Livermore, said he was taking a week vacation earlier this month, our staff panicked about who would drive the truck each morning to pick up food donations from local grocery stores. Then we realized that we have an amazing group of volunteers who would probably be able to pitch in! We asked for help and six people stepped up!

 

From 7 to 9 each morning, one of our regular Pantry volunteers, Aubrey Knight, drove the truck and the following volunteers helped him load and unload the truck:

• Debra Reinhard
• Elizabeth Cossin
• John Kayser
• Suzanne Rothman
• Gary Friedland

Check out this video of Aubrey, live from the truck, talking about why he has volunteered in the Pantry for the past four years with other members of Calvary Baptist Church.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped while Chad was on vacation. He is well-rested from his much-needed vacation!

In other volunteer news...

On October 16th, a group of volunteers will be in the Food Pantry to sort food donated from synagogues during the High Holy Days. Also, JFS is one of 20 local charities that will offer hands-on service projects during the General Assembly Day of Service on Sunday, November 6th. 

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

 

Yesterday, JFS Family Safety Net department hosted an appreciation luncheon for its Weinberg Food Pantry volunteers. About 20 volunteers attended and received gift bags with “100 Grand” and “Payday” candy bars and some JFS-branded goodies which were, as Jessica Paul, Family Safety Net Program coordinator, says, "Their raises for the year!"

They also received a frame with the JFS Guiding Values inside and pots with seeds to grow flowers. The pots said “Volunteers Plant the Seeds of Kindness.” They enjoyed lunches from Gourmet to Go and had fun socializing with each other and our staff.

Yana Vishnitsky, president & CEO; Nancy Benyamin, director of volunteer services; Shelly Hines, Family Safety Net director; and Jessica Paul gave a quick speech thanking everyone for their hard work and dedication.

In addition, the volunteers were asked three questions on a slip of paper. Whoever got the closest, won one of three prizes - a poem about volunteers written on a frame, a volunteer appreciation mug, and a puzzle piece key chain.

How well do you know the Weinberg Food Pantry? Leave a comment below with your answers to the questions our volunteers had to answer. We'll post the answers next week!

1. What year was the Weinberg Food Pantry started?
2. How many pounds of food were donated last year? Just donated, not purchased.
3. How many hours have volunteers contributed to pantry so far for 2011?

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

 

Recently, two wonderful groups of volunteers spent a few hours sorting food and toiletries, bagging rice, and putting food out on shelves in the Weinberg Food Pantry. In August, the following people from a local synagogue, Aish Denver, generously spent two hours volunteering: Michele Askenazi, Bridget Berkow, Lisa Berkow, Susan Greenwald, and Ilana Hamer.

 

Last week, the following ladies from Rose Women's Organization, a volunteer-led charitable fund of Rose Community Foundation, gave their time and energy as well: Barbara Askenazi, Terri Cohen, Melissa Combs Hoch, Dyana Furmansky, Robin Glickstein, Karen Iker, Carol Karsh, Lisa Koenig, Johanna Ladis, Maggie Miller, and Julie Zemel.

 

Thank you to all these volunteers for giving of your time to help with this critical behind-the-scenes work to help ensure that our Pantry runs efficiently! We hope you enjoy the photos of the Rose Women's Organization hard at work!

 

 If you would like to bring a group in to volunteer in the Food Pantry, please contact Nancy Benyamin, director of volunteer services, at (720) 248.4642 for more details.

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department