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Causes: Health, Patient & Family Support, Specifically Named Diseases
Mission: There are approx. 1 million children with life-threatening conditions in the U.S., and some 7 million worldwide. These children and their families are a highly vulnerable population. They require comprehensive support and care, but these needs are not being met under our current system. A study conducted by the U.S Institute of Medicine entitled, When Children Die: Improving Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Children and Their Families (2002), states: 'Too often children with fatal or potentially fatal conditions and their families fail to receive competent, compassionate, and consistent care that meets their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.' Imagine a world where all families of children with life-threatening conditions are not alone; a world where the collective healing wisdom of humanity is accessible to all, especially children thought to be incurable, and where families find strength, hope and healing through their communities. The mission of Sophia's Garden Foundation (SGF), a non-profit social venture founded in 2003, is to create and proliferate a compassionate and highly effective way of caring for children with life-threatening conditions, a way that enables families to take charge of their child's health care to ensure the quality of all their lives. We call this approach Healing in Community.
Programs: Our first initiative is to create an integrated, Web-based survival kit for families of children diagnosed with life-threatening conditions, Healing in Community Online (HICO), that informs, supports and enables families to harness the power of community and collaboration to address all of their needs; physical, emotional, financial, social, cultural and spiritual. Through this Web-based suite of tools, SGF seed content, coaching and elearning modules and user-generated content in a knowledge base with advanced search capabilities, we can maximize the time, interest and expertise of all community members. This will allow for unprecedented collaboration, creativity, compassion, discovery and care to be held in a living repository of our collective healing wisdom.