Outreach, Needs Assessment, and Education

Well it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks. I have been working on the staff training and I am very happy that JFS has decided to make the first in the series a mandatory training. It will take place just before Yom HaShoah and will start with a breakfast and I will present for about an hour and a half. Overall an hour and a half is not a lot of time to lecture about something as complex as the Holocaust, but I believe that it will allow the staff an opportunity to refresh their current knowledge, learn about new aspects, and possibly interest them in learning more. The plan is to provide optional “booster” trainings that will look at additional topics more in depth. The first couple of boosters will discuss topics that relate to our Survivor population, based on where many of them come from and experience that many of them had. The other boosters will be based on feedback from staff. I will survey the staff to see what topics they are interested in, and pick a couple of topics based on that feedback. In addition to offering training, I have also been working to offer continuing education credits for staff that need it. Having this foundation in place is good and will allow us to keep learning as a staff, and in the future we can then apply for CEUs for the community wide training we plan to create.

I am very excited to announce that we have finally set a date and time for our children of survivors town hall. This town hall will allow the children of survivors, who quite often are care providers for their parents, to discuss the needs of their parents, as well as an opportunity for them to find out about the services JFS provides. This town hall is the final step in my comprehensive needs assessment of the survivor community in Metro Detroit. Once this step is completed, I can finalize my report and present it to JFS and other organizations. I am very excited to hear from this group as they often have a different perspective on the needs, and are more willing to disclose the needs of their parents. It is often harder to ask for help for yourself, than it is to ask for help for someone else.

Finally, I attended the February Café Europa and had another amazing time. I ended up staying an hour past the end of the event to continue talking with an amazing survivor I met. She was imprisoned at Auschwitz and worked in the munitions factory. She was absolutely fascinating to talk to, and she had so much to share with me. I feel very fortunate that she was willing to talk to me not just about her experiences during the Holocaust, but her needs, her feelings about what JFS is doing, and even what she thinks about the world she lives in today. I am so grateful that I am allowed to share this time with the survivors, as it allows me an opportunity to remember why I am doing what I am doing, and that everything I do has an impact in the lives of these amazing people. 

Seeing the Impact of Service

Welcome back everybody! A lot has been happening here at JFS. I have begun work on an additional part of the Survivor needs assessment. I have been working on our 2G outreach effort. I have created a new survey, a flyer for advertising the town hall meeting, and a letter explaining who I am and what the needs assessment is for so when children of survivors receive the survey they aren’t wondering what is going on. Meanwhile, I have also made a lot of progress on the first ever Metro-Detroit Survivor Newsletter. The idea is that this will be a bi-annual newsletter that will keep the survivor community informed about JFS services, as well as changes to indemnification as well as new funds.

I taught myself InDesign software because that is what our PR department uses and will allow them to take over the newsletter after my year of service is complete. Once I had learned the software, I created the template for the newsletter as well as all of the content for it. I have been fortunate enough to receive feedback and support from both my supervisors and the PR department, which has helped me fine-tune the newsletter. I am hoping that within the next month I will have the newsletter completely done and we can send it to the printer, develop the digital e-blast version, and send it out to our entire mailing list. Hopefully this will get the word out into the community about the services JFS offers, as well as keep survivors up to date on the latest changes to indemnification, including several new funds that quite a few in the community may be eligible for.

I am very excited to report that so far my outreach efforts have been successful. I had to file my quarterly report to the federal government and was able to report that because of my outreach, we have taken in at least 40 new clients, which has led JFS to expand a part time (Russian speaking) position into a full time position, and they have posted an additional bi-lingual care manager.  It is exciting to get to see that what seems like small things when you are in the daily minutia of planning, development, and implementation is actually having an impact in my own community.

Beyond the newsletter, I have started a new phase of my time here at JFS. I have begun the lengthy process of developing a multi-tiered Holocaust history education program for the staff at JFS. There is a need at JFS to educate all of the staff about the history of the Holocaust, and for those that work with survivors to receive a more in-depth education on not just general history of the Holocaust, but specifics about countries, camps, and important events that survivors may have lived through and may still affect their daily lives. I’m very excited that I get to use what I learned during my Master’s Degree to help educate other people that understand the importance of Holocaust education. I am also looking into expanding this curriculum once it is developed to become a community education event for social workers and other human services groups so they too can learn about what their clients might have lived through, in order to provide more compassionate and understanding service to an aging Survivor population.

I also had the opportunity to give a talk at my co-worker’s church on Sunday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The social justice group has a yearly event to commemorate MLK. I was asked to talk about myself, my education and trip to Rwanda, and something related to MLK. I decided to talk about the connections between the Holocaust, Jewish community, and the Civil Rights movement. I spoke about my history, my education and Rwanda trip (along with a little history of the genocide there), and then talked about this seldom acknowledged connection between the Jewish community and the Civil Rights Movement. Overall I think it went really well, and I was so honored to be invited to talk and have such a great response from the audience. 

I am very excited about the new steps I am taking and absolutely love the work I get to do. It is nice to see things come together and the impact it has on the community.  

Celebrating Life, Renewal, and Hope at Chanukah

It has been a busy week (give or take a few days)! With the success of the survey results that was directly sent to survivors, we decided to add another component. We decided that we would reach out to the children of survivors and see if they have any thoughts on what their parents might need. During our town hall meetings in October we had a couple of children of survivors attend and they had some interested feedback on the needs of their parents, which led us to then wonder if we shouldn’t just ask their children at a special meeting. There is a group in the area here, called CHAIM that is comprised of the children and grandchildren of survivors.  We reached out to them and were invited to speak at their board meeting. We went and briefly explained what I am doing as a VISTA for JFS and the survivor community, and then asked them if they thought the children of survivors would want to have an opportunity to be heard. It was a resounding yes from everyone there and we agreed to collaborate for this phase of the needs assessment. CHAIM will provide the addresses to the children of survivors and I will develop a survey to assess their parent’s needs as well as a letter/flyer to invite them to a town hall meeting where they can come and not only discuss their parent’s needs, but also find out the services provided by JFS. At the board meeting, we found out that, many of the people in the community do not know what JFS does, or that we even provide assistance for survivors. With that in mind, we will be sure to include a fair amount of time during our town hall to discuss the services provided by JFS.

The next day I had the great fortune to be able to meet up with the Holocaust Advisory Committee that meets quarterly and is the group of survivors that help guide us in relation to our work with the Claims Conference. They have been a great help, and a major advocate, for my work here at JFS. I was able to share with them the preliminary results of the needs assessment survey and they were able to respond with their reactions, which were very positive. They agreed with all of the conclusions drawn so far and agreed that the children of survivors may offer an important window into the needs of survivors.

For years at JFS there has been discussions about generating a newsletter for the survivor community about a variety of topics of relevance to the survivor community (new indemnification funds, expansion or changes to services provided, community outreach information, etc.). With the recent announcement of an increase in funds from the Claims Conference and new indemnification funds coming available in the New Year, the feeling that we need to create a newsletter to inform the community has only grown. During our meeting with the committee we asked if they felt this would also be a worthwhile endeavor and they agreed that it would be good to have a newsletter a couple of times a year that keeps survivors up to date on what is going on both at JFS and in the complicated world of indemnification and the Claims Conference. We wanted to make sure that the newsletter represents the interests of survivors and asked if members of the committee would also be interested in working with me to develop the articles, etc. The thought was that this way the newsletter would focus on the questions of the survivor community as well as the information the survivor community needs. I’m very excited about this new project and look forward to working both with JFS, the Holocaust Advisory Committee and the local agencies that work with survivors.

Finally, I got to attend the December Café Europa event at the Jewish Community Center in Oak Park. This is always one of the best parts of my job. I get to sit and talk with Holocaust survivors. Not just about their needs, but also about what they have been doing lately, what I have been doing, the weather, whatever comes up. It is a great opportunity for me to remind myself why I am doing what I’m doing. This time the Café Europa was a special event. We got to celebrate Chanukah! Not being Jewish myself, I have never really participated in the traditions associated with the holiday, so this was an opportunity not only for me to learn, but also for me to be taught by an amazing group of survivors. We were joined children from a local Jewish school who come every year to meet survivors and learn what it was like when the survivors celebrated Chanukah as children and during World War II. It was an incredibly moving site to see the future generations of Jewish children sitting and eating potato latkes with survivors and discussing the past, and the future. This also gave me the opportunity to try my very first latkes, which was delicious and I would like to eat every day if I could! After we ate, a young man was called up to be offered congratulations by the group because he will soon have his bar mitzvah. After loud applause from his peers as well as the survivors, the real party began.  The music was a mix of traditional Jewish music and some newer more popular music. Soon enough a survivor had demanded I come dance with her and a young man from the school and the three of us were up and dancing to “I’ve got a feeling” which led to a great time explaining to the survivor what the song was about, and why someone would write a song like that. Either way, we had a lot of fun as we all danced around the room. This experience is one of the most touching and memorable ones I have had so far at JFS, and it reignited my passion for what I am here to do. 

Here are a few pictures I snapped at the Cafe Europa

What do survivors want, and how to find out

A few weeks have passed since my last post. It’s been a busy couple of weeks implementing the final stages of the needs assessment of the Holocaust survivor community. Since I last wrote, the first mailing of the survey reached a 56% response rate that is beyond our wildest dreams. With the success of the first mailing, I moved on to expand how many survivors we mailed the survey to. We had to compile lists from various programs, and then I had to build those into a mail merge so that I could actually send the surveys. The second set of mailings consisted of almost 200 more survivors that we had not yet heard from.  By doubling the amount of survivors we reach, I am hoping to not only reach a majority of our current clients, but also to get a full picture of the needs of the community. I am still getting quite a few surveys back every day, and the new combined response rate is  42% which is still high considering the fact I double the amount of people mailed.

In addition to the surveys and previous town halls, I built and deployed a survey for our Geriatric Care Managers (GCMs) to see if they had any feedback on services they thought their survivor clients could use. By being able to survey this group of people that have a different perspective on the needs of survivors I’m hoping to both corroborate the direct survey results, and see if there are needs that survivors either don’t think of, or are reluctant to admit.
The final phase of the needs assessment will come with the town hall meetings I am working on planning for the children and grandchildren of survivors. My hope is that they too can corroborate, or possibly provide additional feedback as to the needs of the survivor community. Once I have finished collecting the data I will build an official report and begin acting to improve the services provided to the community.

Meanwhile, while I wait for surveys to come in and work on the plans for future town hall meetings, I have been researching issue related to building volunteer based programs, while also taking a course through AmeriCorps in Resource Development. The course has been very helpful overall because it has allowed me to learn not only about the ethical standards required for fundraising and best practices involved, but how to write letters asking for donations, as well as how to apply for grants from larger institutions. Hopefully this information will come in handy when I am at the stage of developing new programs at JFS and need to find financial support for these initiatives.

Spreading the Word

Welcome back everyone! With the shorter weeks for the holidays, I decided to take a break so I would have a little more to write about.  Quite a bit has happened since I last posted. Town hall meetings are taking place this week. Time sure is flying by! In the past two weeks, in addition to confirming the dates for the community meetings, I finalized the flyers, got assistance in translating them to Russian, and started flyering. With the help of the case workers and supervisors flyers have been going up all over town. Also, we decided to do a direct mailing campaign that includes the flyer and the survey in an attempt to get more people to come to the town hall meeting and to respond to the needs assessment survey.  The survey was also translated into Russian. I was able to directly mail about 200 survivors with a copy of the flyer in the appropriate language and included a copy of the survey as well with an addressed and stamped envelope. I have already received over 50 responses! In addition to the first wave of direct mailings, several hundred bilingual copies of the flyer were being stuffed into bills that went out last week. I am hoping that all of this work will lead to having a lot of feedback. The more feedback I have, the better job I can do in assessing the needs of the survivor community.  I am also thinking about doing a second mailing, possibly after the town hall meetings, with the survey and a letter explaining what I am doing and what information I’m hoping to collect. That way those that could not attend can make sure their voice is heard. All in all, about 660 flyers have been sent out through the mail and flyering campaigns.

So, this week we are holding four town hall meetings. Three of the town hall meetings will be in English, in a variety of locations, and at a variety of times, and one will be held in Russian for the Russian-speaking survivors. I am very proud of our effort to make sure to include the Russian speaking population as they can sometimes be overlooked. I hope that by translating all of our documents into Russian and having Russian-speaking representatives at the town hall, they will be able to come and express their concerns. Once I have collected all of the surveys I can begin to crunch the numbers and see what the common needs are. Additionally, my survey should help us identify those that would like me to meet with them one on one to discuss their needs, or those that would like additional follow up from either the resource center, or their current case worker.

Since I can never seem to do one thing at a time I have also started doing some research on best practices for working with survivors as additional support, or even differences in communication expectations may be needed based on the survivor’s experiences. My hope is to use this information to update the training materials we currently have for training volunteers, caseworkers, and possibly even elder care facilities that are not aware of the special needs for survivors. I have also received some great resources from a fellow VISTA I met at my national training in August that may lead to some new funding sources for new projects based on the needs assessment. I am very happy about all of the work I am getting done, and even more excited about the possibilities of where this first step may take me, as well as my organization.

Until next week…