The St. Albert Sturgeon Hospice Association (SASHA) has been voted the best non-profit/service club in the St. Albert Gazette Readers' Choice Awards.
Second place went to the Fraternal Order of Eagles #2102, and third place went to the Rotary Club of St. Albert.
Heidi Evans, the executive director for SASHA, said she is ecstatic the hospice organization was voted the best non-profit/service club, despite not having been around for very long.
"To be chosen as the number one non-profit by the people of St. Albert, it's incredibly meaningful to us," she said. "I mean, it tells us that we're making a real impact and that we're doing things right."
Evans said SASHA is still a relatively young and small organization. Currently, it has around 45 volunteers in total, with 22 volunteering in the Compassionate Care Volunteer Program, which provides respite for caregivers and support for individuals facing illnesses.
The association supports individuals who are facing life-limiting illnesses and their families, with programs designed to ease the emotional and social isolation that often comes with a palliative diagnosis. They also offer resources, such as advance care planning tool kits and guides to help families have conversations about end-of-life wishes.
Evans said they also help families navigate the often overwhelming health care system after a palliative diagnosis.
"We fill a pretty unique and often overlooked gap in both the community and the health care system," said Evans. "The importance of our support, it truly cannot be overstated, that something as simple as weekly respite for a caregiver or a regular visit to someone who's living alone and always with the same volunteer, this builds trust at a time when people need it the most."
One of SASHA's most well-known events is the winter Lighting the Way event, where the trees surrounding Foyer Lacombe on top of Mission Hill are lit up for people to enjoy.
"It was our way of bringing warmth and light during a difficult time, not just to the residents, but to the families and the staff as well," said Evans.
Other community events include weekly grief walks organized by volunteers from SASHA, the Big Lake Environment Support Society and the St. Albert Bereavement Fellowship.
"They [the walks] have been incredibly beneficial for people who have a loss in their life," said Evans. "And our volunteers, they share special content at each walk [which is] really beautiful too."
Evans said they could not do all the work they do without the volunteers.
"They [volunteers] are the absolute heart of everything that we do," she said. "Many of them have walked this caregiving journey themselves, and they deeply understand how lonely and overwhelming it can be, so they bring that empathy and lived experience into every visit and every program that they volunteer for."
Evans said one thing they want people to know is that they are not alone on this journey. Currently, SASHA is working to raise awareness for the programs in Sturgeon County.
"We want to make sure that our volunteer programs and resources are just as available in rural areas as they are in the city," said Evans. "We want people to know that they're not alone, and the more people know that we as an organization exist, the more people we can help."
