Volunteer of the Week: Kris Gross

<!--

-->

Jewish Adoption and Foster Care Options was begun in 1992 by a Florida educator, Ronald Simon, who worked in social services and child welfare, and found Jewish children who were totally separated from the Jewish community. JAFCO now serves some 350 children of all ethnic backgrounds with a range of services that include an emergency shelter for children aged birth to 12, a group home, foster care and adoption, and a senior caregiver program. Helping make it all happen is Bala Cynwyd resident Kris Gross.

“People don’t think that Jewish kids have problems,” Gross says, but the evidence tells her otherwise. The problems often include a parents’ mental illness or excessive drug use or other situations in which the child is best off taken away from home.

JAFCO’s five-acre “village” in Sunrise, Fla., houses children up to age 21 for whom foster care isn’t appropriate, and is staffed by housemothers and housefathers. Each of its young residents has his or her own bedroom and bathroom in what Gross describes unabashedly as “a really safe, happy, wonderful environment.” Jewish children are offered Shabbat services, Hebrew classes and a bar or bat mitzvah.

“I’m just one of a large team of unbelievably energetic women” working to help, Gross says. She was involved in starting JAFCO’s suburban Philadelphia chapter and has also been an organizer of five fundraisers, including three that she hosted at her homes in Jupiter, Fla., and in Longport, N.J. Potential supporters are shown a video about children from troubled backgrounds that, Gross says, “just breaks your heart.” Gross has made a 10-year commitment as a “godparent,” which means sponsoring a JAFCO child for 10 years.

“Kris is an amazing volunteer and supporter who has done anything and everything to support our mission,” says Rana Bell, JAFCO’s Director of Northeast Development. “She exemplifies what we’d ever want in a volunteer.” On April 26 Gross and her good friend, Michelle Simon, will be honored at an annual luncheon at the Green Valley Country Club in Lafayette Hill.

Gross was raised in Glenolden, Delaware County. She moved to the Main Line, and converted to Judaism when she married Ken Gross, who is active in Main Line real estate. Their two children, Geoffrey and Brooke, grew up in Bryn Mawr and graduated from Shipley and Harriton High School. The marriage ended after 23 years in 2002 but the Grosses remain good friends.

Gross attended Villanova when her children were teenagers and received a degree in psychology. She went on to earn a master’s from Chestnut Hill College in counseling psychology and human services, and is now enrolled in a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Chestnut Hill College.

In addition to her work for JAFCO, Gross serves on the Executive Committee of Golden Slipper Club and Charities, a multi-faceted philanthropy based in Bala Cynwyd. She and Simon have made arrangements each summer to bring a dozen or more children from Florida to attend Golden Slipper’s camp in the Poconos.

“There’s story after story after story,” Gross says of the tough lives experienced by the children at JAFCO. The organization and its village, she says, is a “really remarkable place that offers a chance to make these kids whole again.”

For more information about JAFCO, visit jafco.org or call Rana Bell at 610-397-8688. JAFCO is planning to expand to the Northeast, probably in the Philadelphia area. Continued...

  • 1
  • 2
  • See Full Story

Leave a Reply