Friends of Hospice of Anchorage-
As we find ourselves in a new year, we find ourselves reflecting on the incredible journey we have undertaken together at Hospice of Anchorage. Your steadfast support and unwavering commitment have been the bedrock upon which we have built a foundation of compassionate care for those in our community facing life-limiting illnesses.
We closed out the Calendar Year with a tremendous honor! FNBA nominated us to compete for the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce 2023 Gold Pan Award for the Non-Profit Above and Beyond category earlier this Fall. More than twenty Anchorage area non-profits competed. In October, HOA was notified that we made it to the Top 3 and were subsequently invited to the 2023 Gold Pan Awards Gala. It was a phenomenal evening, showcasing so many incredible organizations and the work they do throughout our community. Your HOA team is thrilled to report that due to the incredible team efforts of all our supporters, Hospice of Anchorage is the winner of the 2023 Gold Pan Award “Non-Profit Above and Beyond” category! We are so grateful for the exposure our Hospice of Anchorage mission received that evening in the company of so many community leaders. We are humbled and feel privileged to do the work we do for the community of Anchorage as we support our fellow Alaskans!
A huge thank you goes out to our volunteers who stepped up to assist HOA both as new Compassionate Companions and as general HOA volunteers at-large supporting our community each week. We are so grateful for the heartfelt commitment that you provide our clients and organization. Our latest Compassionate Companion training was on Feb 24, and we will continue scheduling Compassionate Companion Trainings throughout the year, so check back on our events page often.
Of note and new to HOA are our Children’s Grief Memory Boxes. Children are an important part of our families and young children/teens each have their own way of processing loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. For this reason, it is important to honor those unique feelings of grief and to help provide opportunities to process and cope with an individual’s trauma in meaningful ways. Hospice of Anchorage built a program to support these youth and to distribute “Memory Boxes” through our HOA Resource Center and ASD school counselors. The program began with a generous grant from First National Bank of Alaska, from which we created 50 Memory Boxes to give support to students currently experiencing grief. The need was so great throughout our community that those 50 boxes were quickly distributed, and we are now building more from another generous grant from the Carr Foundation. Thanks to all for the community support of this new program. If you would like to support a student with one of these boxes, please stop by the HOA Resource Center.
You can find the latest events on our calendar at this link: https://hospiceofanchorage.org/events-calendar/
As always we love to hear suggestions or requests which can be sent to: info@hospiceofanchorage.org
Warm regards,
Your HOA Team
