“We have an amazing team,” she
says of her small staff and a team of
more than 150 volunteers.
Shaw says teamwork is what
brought the organization to Oshawa.
Some three or four years before she
was hired, a steering committee
formed to bring Hearth Place to life,
carving out a vision and raising
funds to do it.
“(Hearth Place is a) safe and nurturing
centre for people to come and
find resources and share experiences,” says Shaw.
The 86 Colborne St. W. non-profit
helps those with any type of cancer
and their families learn to heal and
find effective coping strategies.
Through a host of free programs—
from art therapy and exercise to
counseling and peer support to a wig
boutique—more than 1,200 clients
are helped to renew hope, peace and
empowerment.
From Shaw’s experiences, families
dealing with cancer benefit from
turning to a service such as Hearth Place, which requires no referral, for
support.
“They find this very effective and
very helpful,” she says.
Hearth Place focuses on providing
companionship to those diagnosed
with cancer by providing peer
support from someone who has survived
the disease.
“We mostly get people straight
from the surgeon’s office,” says
Shaw, adding that usually means
they’ve got a thousand questions
about what happens next and talking
to someone who’s been there and
made it through can make the journey
easier.
And with an anticipated increase
in cancer diagnoses over the next
decade, Shaw is encouraging
Oshawa to get involved.
She says
Hearth Place wants to reach out to
multicultural communities throughout
the city in an effort to better
serve people from different cultural
backgrounds and encourages clubs
and groups who want to support
their members struggling with cancer
to get involved in the organization.
For more information, call Hearth
Place at 905-579-4833, email hearthplace@heartplace.org or visitwww.hearthplace.org.
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