Summer Faerman
Abilities-Focused Nonprofit
After college, Summer Faerman worked with Bais Ezra, an organization providing programs for people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities. When she moved to Boca Raton approximately 20 years ago, she wanted to continue that work. She immediately connected with JARC Florida, which provides programs and services to educate and empower adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities including autism.
“I missed my population, and I happened to go bowling, and I saw a group of JARC residents that were practicing for Special Olympics,” she says. “I said, ‘Oh, I found my new home.’”
Over the last two decades, Faerman has worked with a variety of JARC programs and has served as a board member for the last two years. She’s now chairing the Judaica committee with a key goal in mind.
“My goal is to be able to create awareness for the holidays, that the residents can learn about it, they can see, they can do and they can celebrate them,” she says. “And if it’s not something on their campus, they can be invited somewhere else. No matter what the synagogue is in the community, they should be able to know that they have a space and that they’re welcome. It’s really important to me that they should feel welcome. Anywhere they go, they should never feel that they’re the center of attention. They should just be part of the community.”
Community is exactly why Faerman continues to give back at JARC. “Community means family to me,” she says. “They’re synonymous. So, when I go to JARC, that’s my family. They are just like a family tree; they’re all of the branches and the roots to keep us the strong people that we are. That’s what they mean to me.”
Faerman would love to share her community and family with others. “I would really like [readers] to say in their head, ‘Wow, that sounds so interesting. How could I get involved?’” she says. “That would be the best success of the whole thing.”
JARC Florida, 21160 95th Ave. South, Boca Raton, 561-558-2550, jarcfl.org
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