There were some minor changes in their work, but the St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation keeps operating. While they keep fulfilling their usual duties, they also do their best to ensure the community stays informed about the health guidelines and the news coming from the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
Foundation executive director Breanne Van De Woestyne said while this time is uncertain for everyone in the community, they are also taking it day by day.
“It’s obviously a new experience for all of us in our office and our board of directors. But we are working together to keep up going on. And the community support is so evident,” said Van De Woestyne.
Their main focuses now are interacting with the community and relaying the messages from the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
“Right now we are just trying to communicate and work with the Saskatchewan Health Authority to just make sure that people in our community are informed about the new guidelines and everything that is going on with the hospital.”
Their day to day operations that still need to be done now have to happen in a new format.
“The hospital has visitor guidelines, so we are actually not able to see clients or donors in person anymore. But we are still doing some work over the phone or over the emails,” said Van De Woestyne.
Even though one of their biggest fundraisers, the Radiothon for Life, was postponed they can still see a lot of support coming from the community.
“We still have donations coming in, we have campaigns running, it’s just those events that require community gathering that we have to put on hold,” said Van De Woestyne.
Going forward the foundation might look into organizing some new fundraising activities that are appropriate during the social distancing times, but right now they just want to make sure that people know they are valuing everyone's safety more than anything.
“We just want to say to our community, ‘Right now it’s the time of uncertainty and we are with our community. The hospital is the huge part of our community and we are still seeing lots of donations and support coming in. And we are very grateful for our community no matter what we go through. It just seems that everyone just comes together, we are just together and hopefully, we can get through it,” said Van De Woestyne.
