Friendship Campus imagines the ‘unimaginable’
Rabbi Yossi Mintz, co-founder of Friendship Foundation, and Nina Patel, the foundation’s managing director, hold a rendering of a $36 million complex designed to help people with special needs integrate into society. The facility is expected to be complete by 2022. Photo by JP Cordero Twelve years ago, Rabbi Yossi Mintz had a dream. Mintz, the founder and director of the Jewish Community Center Chabad of the South Bay, envisioned a state-of-the-art facility where cutting-edge research, technology, and expertise would help people with special needs carve pathways into society. Statistics pointed to a need for this kind of place, and still do. Schools offer programs for students with special needs, but 75 percent of neurodivergent high school graduates don’t meet four-year college admittance requirements. Eight in 10 neurodivergent Americans are unemployed. “So many of these people can’t find a place but they’re so intelligent and so creative,” Mintz said in a phone interview. “I thought, if we could just focus on their aspirations and their unique gifts to the world, then we could turn their special needs into special contributions to society.” Last week, the rabbi’s dream went…
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