In 2007, Alexander JFS answered the decades-long heartfelt entreaties of family members of people with disabilities to provide services and inclusion in our community for their loved ones. An ambitious roadmap was created to create a menu of opportunities for adults with disabilities to create connection with the community, articulate and achieve personal and professional goals and to be given tools to reach these goals. Significant resources, time and energy were devoted to assessing the needs, discovering best practices in service delivery and implementing the plans.

In 2009, a core program was established, Celebration Company, to provide supportive and transitional employment and life skills for adults with disabilities. In its first decade, the program reached many milestones, going from nine people attending three days a week to 29 attending up to five days a week; adding transitions programs for ages 16–21; reaching 90% participation in weekly community based internships and jobs; opening a retail outlet for products, art and photography produced by Celebration Company; creating a permanent home for the program at the Alexander JFS site; and adding all of the participants to the Alexander JFS payroll as employees, receiving at least minimum wage for their work.

While open to people of all faiths and backgrounds, Celebration Company was created within a Jewish framework, and, for the first time in our community’s history, a nurturing, Jewish environment was established for productive, empowering, and creative work for adults with disabilities.

Alexander JFS acted as the community’s agent to fulfill our obligation to provide resources to sustain and enable people with disabilities to determine what they want to achieve with their abilities. Transportation, employment training, life and social skills development and access to mental well-being and physical self-care were essential program elements developed to help Celebration Company employees experience their best life.

For the Good of Life is the Celebration Company tagline for the products created at the company, and it is now also the theme of multi-million-dollar endowment campaign to support the future of this program. The endowment is essential to safeguard the opportunities which have been created for adults with disabilities, so long neglected.

Joan and Stanford Alexander founded the Alexander JFS Disability Services Division in 2007 and provided the foundational support to establish and develop Celebration Company. In August 2019, the Alexanders generously pledged a matching challenge grant to ensure these vital services and programs would be available in the future. While the matching grant challenge has been fulfilled, we sincerely invite your continued support for this important foundation endowment fund so that it can continue to grow. The Alexander Jewish Family Service For the Good of Life Fund will ensure that there will always be Celebration Company for adults with disabilities in our community.

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Jacob Leon

President, Houston Jewish Family Foundation

Ellen and Steve Robinson
Co-Chairs, For the Good of Life Campaign

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If you have any questions concerning a gift to Houston Jewish Family Foundation , please contact Rachel Davis (rdavis@alexanderjfs.org), Development Consultant, at ‭(713) 986-7806‬.