Walk for Journey Home Hospice Windsor 2024

Windsor, Step by Step: Help Me Raise $20,000 for Journey Home Hospice – Bringing Hope and Social Impact to Our Local Community

In the spirit of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, whose life was a testament to compassion, charity, and service to those in need, I am embarking on a personal challenge to make a meaningful impact in our Windsor community. Over the next 30 days, I will walk 20,000 steps every single day to raise $20,000 for Journey Home Hospice Windsor. This ambitious journey will cover the distance between our Toronto and Windsor campuses—over 400 kilometers—through 600,000 steps, each one bringing us closer to our goal of supporting those in need.

A Matching Gift Opportunity!
 We are honored to announce that our generous benefactors, The Basilian Fathers of Sandwich in Ontario, have pledged to match every dollar raised, dollar for dollar, up to $20,000. This means your gift will have twice the impact! For every $1 you contribute, our generous supporters will match it, effectively doubling your support and helping us reach our goal faster.

Why am I walking?
Journey Home Hospice provides compassionate, specialized end-of-life care to individuals in our community, helping patients and families navigate one of life’s most challenging moments with dignity and peace.

Like Saint Elizabeth, who dedicated her life to helping the sick and poor, your support will ensure that these vital hospice services remain available to those in need right here in Windsor. Every dollar raised will directly benefit our local community, helping us provide comfort, care, and hope to individuals in their time of need.

How You Can Help:
 Every step I take is a step toward making a lasting impact. Whether it’s a donation of $5, $20, $100, or more, your contribution will help us raise the $20,000 needed to sustain and enhance the services at the Windsor campus—and with the matching gift, your donation will be doubled!

This is more than just a walk. It’s a commitment to living out the values of service, kindness, and compassion. Please consider donating, sharing this campaign with your network, or even walking alongside me in spirit as we work together to reach this important goal.

Thank you for your generosity and support. Together, we can make every step count and bring hope, happiness, and lasting social impact to those who need it most.

Fr. Matthew Durham, D.Min

Executive Director, Hospice Palliative Care

Are YOU Ready to Walk in support of Journey Home Hospice Windsor?

Last year, we raised $50,000 in the Walk and we’re counting on your support for our hospice once again!

• Dates: Ongoing
• Location: Virtual Walk

Why virtual?
Due to events-based fundraising changes since the COVID-19 pandemic, we will once again be running the event virtually.

How do I participate in a virtual walk? 
The process is similar to last year:

1. Register for the Walk (register here).
2. Create your participant profile – you’re able to upload a photo, tell your personal story and customize your donor page.
   
3. Ask your friends, family and colleagues to support your virtual walk and make a donation towards care for our patients and families at Journey Home Hospice. 
4. Complete a virtual walk in your neighbourhood. Whether it’s on your own or with family or even your colleagues (maintaining at least 6 feet of separation), get out, get active, and help to support care for homeless patients and families at Journey Home!
5. At the end of the virtual walk, all donations raised will be matched by the Saint Elizabeth Foundation (with no limit) thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor.

Why Support Journey Home Hospice?

There is something special about walking through the doors at Journey Home Hospice. The smell of fresh cookies and homemade soup wafts down the hallway. There is the sound of trailing laughter from the kitchen as a volunteer cooks and responds to the low voice of a patient. In the background, a spiritual care provider is reading softly from a book of poems and the easy strains of music float gently through the space. Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time through the door, it just feels like home. Warm, comforting, and peaceful. A place where you belong.

One of our late patients created a piece of art that still hangs in the hospice. It reads: “We live in the shelter of one another.” It’s a perfect reminder of what Journey Home Hospice stands for; a home and a safe space created by people ready and able to shelter each other. For many of the patients who come to spend the final weeks and months of their lives with us, shelter is a foreign concept. These men and women have usually been on their own for a long time. The circumstances of their lives are rarely kind, and most carry heavy burdens of loss, trauma, disappointment, and broken promises. They are looking for shelter and a chance to find hope, joy, and meaning, even at the end of their lives.

Journey Home Hospice fosters hope and life care through our interdisciplinary hospice palliative care team providing 24/7 pain and symptom management, psychosocial and spiritual care, as well as holistic complementary therapies to help patients find peace and meaning in each moment of their lives. Our patients come from Toronto’s homeless community, having experienced the anxiety, uncertainty, and hardships of a life on the streets, bouncing through the shelter system, or on the edge of catastrophe with vulnerable housing. We are only able to offer care because of the generosity of our community of champions and supporters.

Unlike many other Canadians, our patients at Journey Home Hospice rarely have a circle of family and friends to support them. For those lucky enough to have some remaining connections, their loved ones typically do not have the resources to contribute to the operations of the hospice. For the people touched by Journey Home Hospice, we have heard life stories that are filled with pain and hardship, but still an overwhelming desire to be part of a community. As one patient’s mother wrote to us:

“I am so incredibly grateful for the care and compassion you offered to my son, Ajay, during his time at the hospice. Knowing that he was safe and surrounded by kindness is a gift. I wish I had the money to make a donation to support the work of the hospice and pay that care forward so that other people could feel that love.”

Journey Home Hospice is making a powerful difference in the lives of people most in need. More than just medical care, we offer the feeling of home, belonging, hope, and connection when patients are most vulnerable and alone. Hospices in Ontario only receive approximately 50% of their operating costs in government funding and rely on the community to ensure patients have access to hospice care at the end of their lives. We need your help to ensure that patients like Ajay will continue to receive holistic care. Thank you for bringing hope to the hospice and creating a more compassionate community for all people.