Collaboration happens daily amongst colleagues – the hospice approach is a team approach. The NGO collaborates with corporate funders, government departments, sister hospices, people who leave legacies so that we continue to do their work posthumously. The list goes on. Sometimes the core common purpose of us all is forgotten.

Collaboration means the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing. (Cambridge Dictionary) Breede River Hospice is a great collaborator and is blessed by a network all working towards the goal of justice and hope; through relief of suffering for all.

Let’s all incorporate collaboration as a priority. Acknowledging the tiniest daily time spent working with another, as well as the momentous partnerships. Here is an example of how it works.

Breede River Hospice runs a Christmas Food Hamper Raffle every year as a good income generator. Local businesses donate the goodies and our staff and friends sell the tickets.

We used Facebook to market the project which was seen by the chairman, Carol Bruton, of a sister NGO called RAM (Rescue Among Many) RAM shares our service delivery area and its mission is, “to alleviate the symptoms of poverty by supplying institutions, the elderly and children, with resources to meet their shortfalls”.

Carol responded to our Facebook post by buying raffle tickets online in support of our mission of “palliative care for all in Langeberg”, even though she was very worried at the time about getting enough food for her beneficiaries for January – the month with forty five days.

This is an issue that is hard too, for our palliative care team to witness. It is a challenge to provide holistic home care, when there is no food in the patient’s house.

You cannot provide clinical pain relief without supplies and the person qualified to work with them. You cannot alleviate your patient’s worry that her family is hungry without providing food.

Carol Bruton won the first prize hamper for supporting Hospice. Her happiness when she received the call was so loaded with relief for her beneficiaries and so completely contagious, it has inspired me to make collaboration my simple theme for 2017.

There is very real hope that with escalation of collaboration, with gratitude when we have the opportunity to do it, all NGO efforts can make greater impact and stretch the rand.

Let’s all tap into abundance in 2017 through sharing the care with our networks because we all, government folk, business people and the hardworking, driven NGO service providers, all want the same thing at the end of the day, which is happiness.