We received a postcard from "Future of Africa" thanking us for our donation which assisted in getting meals and health care for 225 children.
Next week is the sign up for Crown and Anchor for Oktoberfest. Each Rotarian must sign up for two shifts. Troy will have the sign up sheet available from 11:45 and first come first served.
Troy is still looking for volunteers to assist with the POGO run - contact Troy if you can help.
Sign up for the September 23 District Conference in Mississauga - currently our club is the ONLY local club with no members signed up for the conference. Go to the District website to sign up.
Next week John Rose will speak about aquaculture and their Artic Char operation.
50/50 was a prize of 278.00 and was not won.
Guest Speaker
The Guests of the Club Mark Godin and Tracy Helm of Hospice of Waterloo were introduced by Tim Bradich.
Mark Godin has been with Hospice of Waterloo Region for 3 years after a 30 year career as a teacher and school principal. He is the Director, Strategic and Client Service. Tracy Helm is the Director, Fund Development.
Mark titled his talk as "I don't want to talk about it".
Mark spoke about the origins of Hospice care with roots back to the crusades where hospice was a place of refuge for the soldiers on their long journey to the regions where the battles took place. After the end of the wars of the crusades the hospice locations evolved into Hospitals.
More recently, in the 1960s Cicely Saunders is credited with establishing the first Hospice in London, named St Christopher's house as a facility for the treatment of people at the end of life. The concept was to deal with "total Pain" including physical, emotional and spiritual pain and not just the illness.
He contrasted Palliative care as an effort to deal with pain management as various stages of life and during an illness with Hospice care which is focused on those with a life limiting illness with a likelihood of death within a foreseeable near future.
Hospice of Waterloo Region remarkably has 230 volunteers who are trained in Hospice services that range to anything that the client needs. The range of services is very wide from counselling, to vigils to be sure a person does not die alone, and including anything that can be a stress to clients and even their families. The staff has even assisted in helping clients place their pets to be sure they are placed in loving homes when the client knows they will be unable to care for them.
They provide training for their own volunteers as well as extended training for nurses, PSW staff and physicians who typically get only a very basic introduction to the skills and benefits of hospice care.
The Hospice itself provides services to people in their own homes, hospitals and wherever they are most comfortable. Of the 5,000 people that die in Waterloo Region each year Hospice is currently serving as many as 1,200 of those people at some time, in some way and currently they are working with 87.
All services are free to the clients including counselling and the response times to requests are immediate or as near as is appropriate. Approximately one half of the costs are covered by programs with the ministry of Health and all other funds are from donations or fund raising events coordinated by Hospice.
Mark mentioned that last year they anticipated a 12% increase in demand for services and have actually experienced at 67% increase. They have worked to develop programs to be sensitive to needs of ethnic communities, refugees and the LGBT community and are also working on delivering services to the large Rural areas of the Waterloo region as well.
They are working toward opening a new facility near RIM Park that will be able to house all of their services and have a 10 bed residential unit as well.
From response to questions it is clear that the need for Hospice care is set to grow at a rapid pace and that interest in the facility is strong.
