Yesodot is a lifeline for Jewish families challenged by disability. Yesodot maximizes potential and builds community foundations ("yesodot") for children and young adults by strengthening their families via a broad array of support programs and services. Yesodot members believe that strong and empowered families will lead to enhanced quality of life and greater independence for their loved ones with disabilities. Yesodot is unique in that its programs are family-centered and family-directed, and are based on the idea that families can best identify their own support needs.
Mission, Vision and Values
Yesodot families believe that every Jew is part of the yesodot (foundations) on which the Jewish community stands. Yesodot's mission is to maximize potential, empower families, and build community foundations for Greater Boston's Jewish children and young adults with disabilities.
Yesodot has a broad programmatic vision, established by its families. If Yesodot is successful in achieving its goals, Jewish families supporting loved ones with disabilities will no longer feel isolated or helpless. Yesodot will be recognized both as a lifeline for its families and as a conduit to Jewish community institutions. Families will have a place to turn to for information, family education, support, socializing and recreation for themselves and their loved ones with disabilities. Families will become a part of Yesodot from the moment their child is identified as having a disability, continuing beyond their lifetimes.
This vision is supported by three core values:
Yesodot (foundations): Each Jew has a place in the Jewish community and each Jew is part of the yesodot (foundations) on which the Jewish community stands. Yesodot is an inclusive organization which serves Jews from all denominations and welcomes interfaith families.
Family-Centered, Directed and Governed Support:
Families are in the best position to determine and direct their own support needs. Yesodot upholds the right of its member families and of the individuals in those families to self-determination and self-empowerment.
Community Advocacy:
Yesodot advocates for meaningful acceptance and inclusion of all Jews, regardless of ability, within the Jewish community and the community at large.
History
The Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation ("DMR") initiated the idea for Yesodot a number of years ago with a series of discussions about self-determination with JVS and other community agencies, as part of its ongoing culturally specific self-determination initiative for people with developmental disabilities. Concerned that this population of families had been previously underserved, DMR, JVS, and the Jewish community partnered together to work with these families.
In October, 2000 the Jewish community hired the parent of a child with a developmental disability to assess interest in forming a family support program based on the culturally specific family support model envisioned by DMR, to locate families in the community, and to work with them to form a group. As a result of a number of planning meetings led by parents, Yesodot was formed and began programming in October, 2001. Yesodot had an initial planning period, with a small amount of programming from fall, 2000 through June, 2001, and began full-time programming in the fall of 2001.
Yesodot has since broadened its scope and now includes families
whose loved ones have a a broad range of disabilities. Yesodot currently provides its families approximately two events a month, year round. Yesodot works with families to help them develop their own internal resources and a network of interpersonal relationships, and works with the broader community to enhance community participation and support.
Yesodot is a service of JVS. Yesodot's founding families chose to affiliate with JVS because they were impressed with JVS's solid history and long-standing commitment to and experience empowering people with disabilities through their vocational and training programs. JVS has an excellent long-term relationship with the human service system in Massachusetts and Yesodot's founding families felt that these contacts would be important for both the present and the future.
