News & Impact

Palo Alto Online News by Sue Dremann Like Robbie the robot in Isaac Asimov’s 1940 science fiction book, “I, Robot,” digital devices may be today’s nursemaids for children. And as a result, some kids are becoming more interested in playing with their computers and smartphones than with other children, according to researchers. Read More from Palo Alto Online News … Read More

San Francisco Business Times by Renée Froj As congress continues the seemingly endless debate over immigration reform, San Francisco is taking things into its own hands. As part of a three-year private-public partnership, the city started a program Tuesday to help San Francisco’s estimated 100,000 eligible immigrants navigate a path to naturalization. Read More from the San Francisco Business Times… Read More

J Weekly by Dan Pine San Mateo resident Lenci Farkas sat before the video cameras and told her tale of survival: deportation by cattle car from Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz, a daring escape from the Death March of 1945, a new start in America. Read More from J Weekly… Read More

Jewish Journal by Ryan Torok In a separate effort to make sure that voices from the Holocaust are not forgotten, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the San Francisco Bay Area-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) are partnering to raise money to support an initiative that will help digitize more than 1,400 Holocaust survivor testimonies that were recorded on VHS tapes during the 1970s and 1980s. Read More from the Jewish Journal… Read More

J Weekly by Rebecca Rosen Lum Christmas Day for many Jews is about more than eating Chinese food and going to the movies. This year like every year, as part of the time-honored American tradition of Jews doing mitzvahs at Christmastime, Jewish volunteers across the Bay Area will be offering gifts of comfort and community — sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the vulnerable. Read More from J Weekly… Read More

Stanford Social Innovation Review by Curtis Chang I recently spent some time with one of the most well-regarded agencies in the Bay Area: Jewish Family and Children Services (JFCS). JFCS is the oldest public charity west of the Mississippi and serves the elderly from the entire community, not just the Jewish one. In the 1980s, it began to struggle financially. Amid this fiscal crisis, Anita Friedman took over as the executive director and vowed to reinvent the agency’s business model or go out of business trying. Read More from the Stanford Social Innovation Review… Read More