Let’s give hope to HopeSpring

For the past 21 years, HopeSpring Cancer Support Centre has offered hope — and help — to people in crisis in this community.

It has done this for free. And it has done this without getting a dime from any government.

But today it is HopeSpring that is fighting for its existence and in urgent need of help. After all it has done for cancer patients, their families and caregivers in Waterloo Region, it should get that aid.

The problem HopeSpring faces, like so many other small agencies, is money. Despite its best efforts, this nonprofit organization has been unable to raise the funds it needs to keep going.

Sinking under this financial strain, HopeSpring announced in January that all the programs and services it offers would end on Feb. 28 while its centre in Kitchener would close permanently on March 31.

In response to this news, an outpouring of community support has raised the possibility HopeSpring can survive. This is a heartening development.

As of this week, HopeSpring’s programs and services will continue until the end of March. After that, however, its future lies in the community’s hands.

People have so many options these days when making charitable donations. There are so many good causes and so many fine agencies supporting them.

But there’s a compelling case to keep HopeSpring alive. For more than two decades it has been there for cancer patients, their families and caregivers in their hour of need and offering them a wide array of services.

These include relaxation programs such as yoga and massage, nutrition education, short-term counselling, wig and camisole fittings and even a lending library. And people can either go to HopeSpring’s Kitchener office on Andrew Street or the Chaplin YMCA in Cambridge.

When HopeSpring opened, it was the only local facility to provide this kind of assistance. Today, cancer patients can access some of the same services from other agencies. Unlike HopeSpring, some of them charge for what they do.

But what makes HopeSpring truly special is that it’s also a community. Cancer patients and family members who go to HopeSpring meet other people confronting the same challenges, fears and pain. By gathering at HopeSpring, they support each other.

It’s no wonder that many who belong to this community are grateful and go on to volunteer with HopeSpring. They’re a major reason it can accomplish what it does on an annual budget of $600,000. There are only five, full-time employees working for HopeSpring. But with its 160 volunteers, it’s a small army.

What happens next is up to you. As well as requiring $400,000 to cover its bills in this fiscal year, HopeSpring needs financial commitments for the next four or five years.

A trust fund for it has been set up and if HopeSpring can’t be saved the money will be refunded.

Time is short and every dollar counts. But we believe HopeSpring deserves hope.

You might, too, someday if your doctor asks you to sit down, then says the word “cancer.”