Her calling is caring

Caring is a career for Jen Strausser.

That's one of the few things that hasn't changed during her 15 years with Lititz-based Friendship Community.

The local nonprofit organization that became the county's first community home for the disabled in 1972 has grown continuously.

Back then, there were only a dozen individuals in the Friendship Community, a program geared to make those with disabilities feel right at home in Lancaster County.

Today, nearly 150 individuals — in Lancaster and Lebanon counties — feel that warm welcome under the watchful eyes of Friendship Community staff.

Careerwise, Strausser wouldn't have had it any other way.

"I feel like it's my calling in life," she said, standing by The heART of Friendship ART Gallery in Ephrata, a profitable venue for disabled individuals to express themselves artistically.

The gallery, which opened in 2008, "was huge for us," Strausser said.

And for the many residents who spend countless hours working on products that will don the walls and showcases of the crammed, colorful room at 39 E. Main St.

Strausser serves as gallery director and also as director of home-based services, where she oversees disabled individuals living on their own — a setting foreign to them a few short decades ago.

Strausser started working with the organization in a much smaller capacity in the 1990s, when the nonprofit was still stretching its legs.

During her 15 years onboard, it has never been about status or a bigger paycheck.

"I'm content," she said. "It's not so much what I get out of it."

Strausser and everyone else in the community are celebrating 40 years of service this year.

"It's a yearlong celebration," Strausser noted.

While the original Jubilee House still stands behind the group's headquarters on East Oregon Road, the program has stretched far beyond the backyard of its home base.

Today, 142 individuals live in 29 properties, mostly in Lancaster County.

In 2006, a complex, Old Mill Apartments, opened in Ephrata for individuals able to live on their own.

The gallery followed two years later.

There, pottery, paintings and other crafts provide a means of expression for the residents — and a supplemental income.

The residents are trained, by instructors and professional artists, not only to express themselves, but to do so in a way that appeals to the consumer.

To walk the gallery's small confines is truly an inspiring experience.

Strausser said she always pictured her life this way.

"I knew I wanted to do something in human services," the 38-year-old mother of three said.

When she was 14, her parents adopted a disabled boy — her brother. It was then she started to realize what her executive director, Gwen Schuit, preaches.

"They are a segment of society like you and I, but they are just different," Schuit says. "We're all different."

"When we adopted my brother, that sort of facilitated that" desire, Strausser, of Brecknock Township, said. "From that moment, my life was steered in that direction. All the pieces just started to fit."

Yet, at the community's peak, it stands to fight perhaps its toughest battle.

The organization is working through an 8.5-percent cut in state funding. A 6-percent slash — about $600,000 — was abruptly announced in November, giving the nonprofit a month's notice to sustain the loss and forge ahead this year.

That's more money than the group raises in a year from private donations, Schuit pointed out.

This anniversary year is filled with events with the pinnacle coming on Oct. 26. Patrick Henry Hughes, a blind and disabled man who became an established musician and performer, is the keynote speaker.

It's expected to be an inspirational day — like most others in the Friendship Community.

And Strausser is glad to be along for the ride.

"I feel everyday," she said, "like I'm answering that calling."

bhambright@lnpnews.com