Completing The Circle

The future Friendship Circle Ferber-Kaufman Life Town Center

Friendship Circle plans call for construction of an all-inclusive facility for children with special needs.

Shelli Liebman Dorfman
Staff Writer 

  Reprinted with the permission of the Detroit Jewish News

To those who think dreams are money, vacations and power, Shari Kaufman offers a defiant correction: “A dream can be as simple as an outstretched hand, a caring smile, a friend and a safe place to go to feel good.”
With deep-felt determination, Kaufman and other supporters of the Friendship Circle are about to turn their dream into a 20,000-square-foot, multi-staffed reality — a learning and therapy center dedicated to the care and nurturing of metro Detroit’s children with special needs.
“People look at children with special needs and say, ‘Look at what they can’t do,’” says Kaufman. “We look, and say: ‘Look at what these beautiful children can do and how much they are able to share, and how much they change who we are by who they are.’” 

Rabbi Levi Shemtov

Five years ago, Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov of West Bloomfield began the Friendship Circle as a shoestring program to match teen volunteers with children having special needs.
The number of lives affected by the one-on-one sessions in individual homes and weekly programming has exceeded what the Shemtovs ever envisioned. Now, more than 300 young volunteers have established ongoing relationships with children involved in the Friendship Circle.
“There is a real need for a central location that can serve as a community center for children with special needs and their families,” Rabbi Shemtov says. The new facility will be “a place where the children feel wanted and loved while their parents relax — where they will be able to feel as comfortable as they do in their own back yards.”

The Dream Grows

The Friendship Circle’s planned Ferber-Kaufman Life Town Center went through two years of upgrades and additions before a groundbreaking was scheduled recently for spring 2001.
Support for this dream began in June 1998 with the help of Andy Jacob of Birmingham, a longtime Friendship Circle supporter. Pleased with the playground they had built in an economically deprived area of Ashkelon, Israel, Jacob, co-founder and president of loangiant.com, and his partners were looking for a similar project locally.

Jacob came to Rabbi Shemtov for advice. “I told Levi that we would like to build another playground, but this time in metropolitan Detroit, and for children of special needs,” Jacob says. “It was my dream and desire to build the first-ever playground in the area specifically designed for children with special needs.” 
In the early stages of the project, Rabbi Shemtov was introduced to Kaufman. She had just completed research and planning for a playground at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit built in honor of her parents, Miriam and Fred Ferber of Orchard Lake. The endeavor, to be dedicated later this year, was funded by Kaufman and her husband Alon, and her siblings Ronda and Ron Ferber and Annette and Brian Adelman, all of West Bloomfield.
“We started by talking about a little outdoor playground,” Rabbi Shemtov says of his meetings with Jacob and Kaufman. “But soon we realized a playground wouldn’t work. It would have to be a park.”
In November 1998, a focus group of families with children with special needs was asked to make suggestions. They came back to Rabbi Shemtov with ambitious news. “They said a park in this climate doesn’t make sense,” the rabbi recalls. “They said it had to be a building — an indoor social gathering place with an indoor playground.” 
It was decided that “first and foremost, the children need a place to go to be safe and secure and comfortable,” Kaufman says.

Edward Meer, Shari and Alon Kaufman, Robert Silverstein, Howard Babcock, Jack Wolfe and Andy Jacob

Then she took it a step further, suggesting a component that would focus on social and real-life skills for the children of the Friendship Circle.
A therapy program was then added to the plans as well as a parent lounge, a volunteer parlor, a gym and much more.
“A small idea of building a playground has become a big idea of building a one-of-a-kind facility that will positively change the lives of our special children, their siblings, families and community,” Jacob says.

The Dream Takes Shape

The Center will be located on the Meer Family Friendship Campus of the Lubavitch Foundation development, on Maple between Drake and Halsted, in West Bloomfield. Completion of the building is expected in spring 2002.
Named for the Kaufmans and the Ferbers, the new facility was designed with input from parents and also from therapists who specialize in teaching and interacting with children having special needs.

With plans drawn by Architectural Consortium of Troy, the facility will be completely accessible to those with special needs. It will be large enough to accommodate simultaneous programs for children, their families and volunteers Sundays through Fridays, with hours likely to extend from 8 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m.
The facility will include eight standard therapy rooms, an area for homework help, gross motor rooms with equipment and sensory rooms, including sand, water and bean tables.
With families and volunteers vital to this care, separate parlor areas will be built to accommodate each. The lounge for parents will offer a library, cafeteria and cushioned sofas. The lounge for the Friendship Circle Volunteer Club’s young adults will contain a reading/sitting area, Ping-Pong and pool tables, board games, electronic arcade games and computers. 
The two-level building and compensation for staff comes in at an estimated cost of $4 million. “We know this is an ambitious goal, but we’ve raised $2.65 million,” Rabbi Shemtov says. “And now we have the confidence that we will raise the rest.” 

Life At Life Town

When Shari Kaufman suggested a social-skills and therapy component to the new facility, she called it “Life Town.” Designed by Habitat Inc., an Arizona company specializing in realistic movie-set environments, it will be built as a scale-model city street within the Life Town Center. 

Alison Gilligan, 7, of Livonia enjoys outside play time at Bingham Farms Elementary School last August, with camp assistant Lisa Cambell, 19, of West Bloomfield.

“Life Town is a prominent feature of the building and is as realistic as you can get,” Rabbi Shemtov says.
The “street” will have parked cars, lampposts, a private home and storefronts of a food store, a general store, movie theater and a restaurant, each containing a functional, completely decorated interior.
“It will be used to teach the children social skills and how to behave in real-life situations, with volunteers acting as shopkeepers and shoppers, citizens and pedestrians,” Rabbi Shemtov says.
Creating the therapy component of Life Town was Rebecca Lepak, hired as therapy director at the new facility.
She is a speech and language pathologist and owner of Lepak and Associates in Walled Lake. 
Other programs at the center will include physical and occupational therapies, speech and language pathology, coupled with emotional support and encouragement and social-skills training. Children will learn how to apply therapy-acquired skills in real-life situations.

Garrett Rasdott, 8, of Novi works on a project with camp assistant Sue Gunn of Livonia during the Camp Therapy pilot program held last August in Bingham Farms.

“This will teach the children how to exist in the real world,” Lepak says.
Under the direction of a therapist and an aide, Camp Therapy will be used to teach social and behavioral skills in camp-like groups, integrated with enabled children as well. Last summer, Lepak ran a Camp Therapy pilot program for 10 weeks at Bingham Farms Elementary School with 16 children, and plans to do so again next summer in a rented facility.
Camp Therapy is one of the few Friendship Circle programs to have a cost to parents, although it will be on a sliding scale. Most other programming will be run by volunteers and have minimal or no charge. The Friendship Circle is open to all children with special needs, regardless of religion or race, says Rabbi Shemtov.

Dream For The Future

Rabbi Shemtov sees the new facility, with its many components, as a dream about-to-become-true.
Kaufman describes support of the new building as the true definition of derech eretz (civility or respect).
“If I learned one thing from the Torah, it is that we should treat our fellow man with kindness and take care of the people around us,” she says. “Children are our future and Friendship Circle believes in believing in children — no matter what their capacity.
“They take a child by the hand and look him in the eye and promise so many things the world doesn’t promise. They promise a friend,” she says.
Friendship Circle gives children with special needs “the chance to be who they are and to act in any manner their character allows them to act,” she adds.
“Every single person has the capacity to fulfill somebody else’s dream. They just don’t realize how little it really takes for these children.”