{"id":22610,"date":"2017-01-20T04:59:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T12:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=22610"},"modified":"2017-01-17T16:05:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T00:05:24","slug":"need-for-jfsa-services-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/01\/20\/need-for-jfsa-services-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"Need for JFSA services grow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewish Family Service Agency chief executive officer Richard Fruchter with Ellen Bick, recognizing the work of JFSA staff at the agency\u2019s Nov. 30 annual general meeting. (photo from JFSA)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Fruchter is the new chief executive officer of the Jewish Family Service Agency (JFSA). He barely had time to settle into the agency\u2019s former location before its move to East Broadway, adjacent to Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society. As Fruchter cheerfully leads an office tour, he has clearly settled into his role, proud of the new space, the agency\u2019s staff and their work.<\/p>\n

Fruchter is excited to expand the agency\u2019s activities and profile in the Jewish community and beyond, as well as to take it in some new directions required by changing times.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s inevitable now because of the generational shift that there is going to be more need for home support,\u201d said Fruchter, citing one example. \u201cThat particular area of service is growing by more than 10% a year. We now have more than 80 home support workers. They go out into all neighbourhoods in the community. We also work with the Better at Home program with United Way, working in the broader community. That\u2019s another potential growth area for us that we have to prepare for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fruchter said JFSA\u2019s activities in the Jewish community are more urgently needed with each passing month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is that there is a tremendous need for food and housing,\u201d he explained. \u201cThese are two areas where there is an affordability crisis for our community just like the rest of the community; we\u2019re seeing astounding growth in those two areas on a month-to-month basis. When it comes to food security, we\u2019re seeing growth all across the board \u2013 certainly with seniors, but we\u2019re also seeing more families, it used to be mostly individuals. We see people coming to the [Jewish] Food Bank twice a month instead of once. The demand for food vouchers has grown by over 20% this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIf housing is getting more and more expensive for people, they begin making choices between rent and food or medicine, and we don\u2019t want people making those kinds of choices. Those needs tend to tumble into each other, and people end up needing more and more services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advantage that we have as an agency is that we have this remarkable basket of services, so that if someone is food insecure, sometimes they\u2019re also housing insecure. If they are a new immigrant, they may need employment opportunities, they may need a hand-up for a couple of months in transitional housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another mounting issue, said Fruchter, is the growing needs of aging Holocaust survivors. \u201cWe are seeing that many survivors are beginning to need support, or more support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are not cognizant enough of the presence of poverty in the Jewish community,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe plan to partner with CIJA [Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs] to do unprecedented advocacy both within the Jewish community and with the government \u2013 federal, municipal and provincial \u2013 to show what an important cog we are in helping people to be more resilient and able to deal with the crises in their lives. I am looking forward to working more closely with our partner agencies and our synagogues to make sure no one slips through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the role JFSA plays in the broader Vancouver community, Fruchter explained, \u201cMost of the services we do are in the Jewish community, but if you go back to our values, when our sages said, \u2018welcome the stranger,\u2019 they didn\u2019t mean the Jewish stranger. They meant, \u2018welcome the stranger\u2019! If we find that people are in need, we\u2019re going to go out there and help them. The main areas are employment, settlement and the Better at Home program, which is for lower-income seniors who need a little help to stay in their homes. The United Way came to us and said we love what you\u2019re doing, we wonder if you could replicate that in the broader community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fruchter came to service work in the Jewish community after a background in journalism, communications and social services. His work with the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle was pivotal. \u201cI just grew into that job and loved what I did, and my Jewish identity blossomed from the work I was doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fruchter worked for federations in Arizona and Minneapolis before heading to Seattle. He first came to Vancouver as a senior management consultant two years ago for the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, after being president and CEO of the Seattle Federation for six-and-a-half years. \u201cI got a call from Mark Gurvis, an old pal in the Jewish communal services field, saying he was moving to New York and had a proposition for me. I got the interim job, then went home. Later, I got a call from JFSA wanting consulting, and that progressed to a job offer. I was inspired by what I was seeing and the potential of the organization, so I accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fruchter\u2019s wife and three sons still live in Seattle, while he commutes to Vancouver every Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the community here,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is very strong, very intergenerational, very committed. The agencies work well together, the rabbis work well together, which is not the case everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Gindin<\/strong> is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the <\/em>Forward and <\/em>All That Is Interesting, and has been published in <\/em>Religion Dispatches, <\/em>Situate Magazine, <\/em>Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jewish Family Service Agency chief executive officer Richard Fruchter with Ellen Bick, recognizing the work of JFSA staff at the agency\u2019s Nov. 30 annual general meeting. (photo from JFSA) Richard Fruchter is the new chief executive officer of the Jewish Family Service Agency (JFSA). He barely had time to settle into the agency\u2019s former location […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1184,6679],"class_list":["post-22610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-jfsa","tag-social-services"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}