Does your organization or business have members or employees who:

• Are caring for someone who is elderly or living with illness?
• Are living with aging or illness?
• Have experienced the death of a loved one in the past year?

Do your members or employees know about how to support co-workers and friend, how to advocate effectively and how to plan ahead for future health care decisions?

Whether you manage a business or lead a community organization (such as a faith community, retirement community, educational institution or civic group), serious illness, caregiving, end of life and grief do have an impact. 

These life experiences affect people physically, emotional, spiritually and socially. They change a person’s quality of life.  And they have a significant financial cost both for people who are affected as well as for businesses and organizations. 

As a leader, you have an opportunity to affect the kind of care and support people experience during challenging times.   Your decisions will make a difference.

At Project Compassion, we work with organizations and businesses to help you provide support for your members and employees.  This orientation page will help you discover ways to:

1.  Learn How Illness and Caregiving Affect You

There are helpful resources on our website for learning about what people living with illness and caregiving face:      

• Check the Resources sectionto find information, organizations and websites on illness and caregiving
• See Publications and Educational Eventsfor further resources on illness, caregiving, end of life issues and grief.  
• If you are a faith community leader, please note The Unbroken Circle:  A Toolkit for Congregations around Illness, End of Life and Grief. 

2.  See Ways You Can Make an Impact

For people living with illness or caregiving, having support makes a big difference, decreasing stress and burnout.  Even when people have access to healthcare or paid services, there is no substitute for caring support from your organization or business.  Here are some ways you can help:

• Provide helpful information.  Many people living with illness, caregiving, end of life and grief don’t know where to start to access supportive services.  Providing information from Project Compassion and linking to our website is a simple way to help your members or employees access resources and services.  Click here to learn more about partnerships.
• Organize a Support Team.  Support teams are coordinated groups of friends or neighbors that offer practical, emotional, spiritual and quality of life support for people living with illness and caregiving.  Organizations and businesses can partner with Project Compassion to create teams in the following ways:
• If you are in the Triangle area of NC, you can partner directly with Project Compassion to create Support Teams.  To learn more about Support Teams or to refer a friend or family member, click here.  To partner, click here.   
• If you are interested in creating specialized support for African Americans living in Durham, Orange, Chatham or Wake counties, you can become a Circles of Care partner organization.  To learn more about Circles of Care, click here.  To partner, click here.  
• If you are outside of Durham, Orange and Chatham counties, NC, you can purchase Project Compassion’s Support Team Guidebook to learn how to start a team.  In addition to the Guidebook, Project Compassion  offers leadership development conference on creating and sustaining teams. Check out Support Team Development.
• Coordinate support online.  Your organization can offer a free online community calendar to coordinate support using a free service available from Project Compassion and Lotsa Helping Hands.  Click here to get started:
  http://project-compassion.lotsahelpinghands.com/caregiving/home/. 
  Always use this link in creating communities to continue the partnership.    

3.  Advocate for Change

When someone lives with illness or caregiving, advocacy has never been more important.   Unfortunately, being a patient or caregiver often requires people to be at their best when they feel at their worst.  By helping your members or employees learn how to advocate effectively, you will help everyone:

• understand their choices
• prevent medical errors
• get the best care available
• be fully prepared to advocate as needed  

Here are resources available to help you improve your patient advocacy skills:

• Read Tiffany Christensen's Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Navigating the Healthcare Maze.
• Get a copy of “Finding Your Voice in the Healthcare Maze: A Patient Advocacy Workbook” by Tiffany Christensen.  Based on Project Compassion’s Finding Your Voice workshop for patients, caregivers and community members, this workbook offer tips, strategies and exercises to “bring the workshop home.” 
• Host a Finding Your Voice workshop.  If your organization is based in NC, Project Compassion may be able to partner with you to offer a free Finding Your Voice consumer workshop.  To learn more, go to Finding Your Voice. 
• Consult our Advance Care Planning Resource Center to learn about the advance care planning process, access forms and helpful tools, such as Getting It Together.

4.  Discover Partnership Opportunities

By partnering with Project Compassion, you will help your members and employees access the care and support they need.  You will also demonstrate your commitment as a compassionate business or organization.  Here are some ideas: 

• Educate your employees or members about the issues you learn about through Project Compassion.  Forward our e-letter to your members and employees, link to our website, publicize upcoming events. 
• Invite us to give a presentation or workshop for your staff or members.
• Partner with Project Compassion to form volunteer Support Teams with your members or employees. 
• Underwrite Project Compassion as a corporate or organizational sponsor. 

Click here to learn more about become a partner.    
 

We hope these resources and ideas will help you as you support others.  We encourage you to explore our website fully, subscribe to our e-letter and share our resources with your members and employees.  We look forward to growing our partner with you.