Jewish Family & Children’s Service is a non-profit, non-sectarian organization that provides responsive, quality, personalized behavioral healthcare and social services from early childhood to late adulthood without regard to race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion or income.
Last year, JFCS served over 37,000 individuals from under-served, low-income, at-risk, and minority populations. Their services include: family counseling, mental health assessment and treatment, child crisis intervention, substance abuse counseling and prevention, older adult services, support for victims of domestic violence, job skills and GED training for teens in foster care.
As one of the longest-serving, most comprehensive behavioral health and social services agencies in Arizona, JFCS has helped the neediest people in our community for over 80 years. Jewish Family & Children’s Service mission is to foster healing, restore hope, increase self-sufficiency and safety, and reduce family violence in our community.
“Healing Lives, Whatever it Takes.”
Here’s our interview with Frank Jacobson, Vice President of Marketing and Development at Jewish Family & Children’s Service, on how their organization practices selfless service.
Selfless service is loosely defined as a service that is performed without any expectation of something in return. How does your organization selflessly serve others?
We help people who are in need no matter who they are, no matter how old they are, so we're treating for the very young and the very old. We treat people of all ethnicities, all races, and all backgrounds. People in need, usually through no fault of their own, to help them regain their life, help them to be safe, self-sustaining, and then ultimately be able to contribute back to the community.
Do you have a specific example or a story of selfless service that has happened at your organization?
Our largest program is in the behavioral health services. People don’t like to talk about mental health, and yet mental health is something we all have, or don’t. One in four or five adults will experience symptoms of mental illness at some time in their lives. Whether it is mild depression or even alcohol abuse, we just don’t recognize it, or we don’t want to recognize it. Oftentimes, the stigma is such that it is too frightening to even consider.
Please take a look at one of our success stories to help understand the impact our services can have on a young person’s life.
What are your organization’s values, and how does the idea of selfless service fit into those values?
Building community, charity, performing acts of kindness, and repairing the world are what we value at the core of our organization. Each of these values encourages us to give selflessly in the services we provide to our clients.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with the world about the idea of selfless service?
I tell everybody we’d like put ourselves out of business- We’d love to be able to help everybody get to that point of being safe, self-sustaining, and contributing back to where the services that JFCS provides are just no longer necessary. It’s a great way to go out of business!
Keyser is a commercial real estate advisory firm that is transforming the business world through selfless service. Our goal is to prove once and for all that the most self-interested business strategy in the world is to be of selfless service to others. Contact us today to see how we can be of service to you.