Last Thursday (Dec. 3), was my 25th anniversary at JFS.  I can’t say it seems like yesterday, but it does seem like it’s gone by pretty quickly.  When I started here, JFS was essentially a counseling agency.  We were much smaller and much more focused on helping people with their psychological/emotional problems.  We needed to expand our services to be more community-based (we opened several branch offices to be more accessible) and we needed to figure out ways to address some tough issues like child abuse, teenage pregnancy, isolated elderly, the mentally ill.  Looking back, it’s really quite amazing how the agency has grown.  We now have individual programs to address all of those needs, and that’s just scraping the surface. See a list of all of our programs>>

Last Friday, I went to our annual thank you brunch for our On the Go volunteers.  Two quick stories: one driver, a retired police detective, told me his job was always enjoyable, but by the time he became part of the homicide division (the pinnacle in a detective’s career), it wasn’t much fun anymore.  He looked me in the eye and said, “Driving seniors is the best job I ever had.”  The other story is from one of the other volunteers who was recently asked by her rider which shul she belonged to and she answered “the Catholic one!”   This is why I love my job: working with people (volunteers, staff, board) who do amazing acts and show amazing commitment to help people……and always finding something to smile about too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Older Adult Services, Programs and Services, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.