History

The Guest House has become the spiritual center of the Zen Hospice Project Community. In this peaceful setting, we have trained over 1,500 volunteers who have become members of our acclaimed Volunteer Caregiver Program. Unlike most other volunteer programs, ZHP has far more applicants each year than available openings and over half of our volunteers far exceed our one-year service requirement. Many have been with us for five to ten years or longer in work by the bedside that can be challenging - the most powerful testimony of all to the spiritual component of our program.

In 2004, a generous donor enabled Zen Hospice Project to purchase the Guest House. At the same time, the house was closed for much needed renovations that included compliance with insurance requirements to care for the dying. This was a heartbreaking experience for the entire ZHP community and for the past several years we have been working to raise the funds necessary to complete the remodel. Those renovations are now complete and we have once again opened the doors of our Guest House to dying patients and their families. This time, though, as a licensed Residential Care Facility for the Chronically Ill (RCFCI) care facility.
We have now formed a partnership with UCSF Medical Center that helps to ensure financial stability for the Guest House and creates bridges between the spiritual and medical dimensions of caregiving.

RIPPLE EFFECT

People from all over the world are eager to learn our unique approach to providing compassionate care at the bedside. Academics, administrators and the clergy from as far away as Japan, Korea and Kenya have all sought us out to gain a better understanding of our work at Zen Hospice Project. The Zen Hospice Project model has shaped the hospice movement internationally, with direct influence on other care giving centers such as the first ever hospice established in Poland at Auschwitz. In response to this demand, the Guest House is also home to our Education Center, which was originally founded as the Institute on Dying. Created as vehicle to reach a wider community through seminars, lectures and workshops, the Education Center has provided training for over 17,000 healthcare professionals and caregivers as we continue to lead the national discussion about the need for compassionate presence within the hospice movement. As a natural outgrowth of our educational work, an array of grief support groups are offered on a donation basis to anyone dealing with loss.

TODAY

Zen Hospice Project became an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation in 1992 and is guided by a Board of Directors and managed by a small administrative staff.  We work in four main program areas: direct care for the sick and dying, hospice volunteering, education programs, and grief support.

Zen Hospice Project is frequently the first place people turn to as they seek help for family members or friends who are dying, often with no money and no place to go. As they struggle with their own grief, they are searching for options, resources and alternatives to provide end-of-life care for their loved ones. When they contact us, the connection is real – the emotion often raw – as they sense a major step is being taken that is tangible in what will be the painful journey ahead. It is an honor for us to help them start this journey, and often times to help them finish it.

 

ORIGINS

In the mid-1980s, a small group of visionaries at the San Francisco Zen Center acted to address the needs created by the spread of cancer and the raging AIDS epidemic. Our beginnings were at once modest and revolutionary, with two driving forces for our mission: To offer kindness, generosity and compassion to those who were dying, and to do so regardless of their ability to pay for our services. Many years later, Zen Hospice Project remains true to that mission.

In the beginning there were only of handful of hospices in the entire United States. At first, ZHP trained volunteers served on the streets of San Francisco, providing mindful and compassionate care for dying patients in the extended stay hotels of the Tenderloin neighborhood. This was an indigent, underserved population of terminally ill people, marginalized by society and isolated in their pain and despair. Since all too often they had no family to care for them in the last days and weeks of their lives, Zen Hospice Project volunteers, sitting at the bedside, became their family.

SERVING AT LAGUNA HONDA HOSPITAL

In 1988, we began providing volunteers for the newly established hospice ward at Laguna Honda Hospital, which we continue to do today. As an integral part of the hospice care team, over 90 Zen Hospice Project volunteers provide support for the 25-bed hospice ward seven days a week. In this setting, we have found ways to joyfully celebrate the lives of the residents as they move, in their own very different ways, towards death.

Zen Hospice Project volunteers have also created a place of peace in the garden just outside the hospice ward, where patients can replenish their spirits and be close to the kind of healing power that only nature can provide. It has been described as “a serene oasis with melodic chimes and scores of stones that bear the names of loved ones lost. In one area, there is a children’s garden that has a yellow brick path and a mural depicting a day in the life of an enchanted forest.” This garden has become a very important part of our hospice community.

With more than half of the dedicated hospice beds in San Francisco at Laguna Honda Hospital, Zen Hospice Project serves an indigent population of patients who receive the highest quality of care regardless of their financial situation. In what has become a remarkable 20-year partnership of public and private institutions, Zen Hospice Project and Laguna Honda have cared for over 2,000 hospice patients and their families, celebrating their lives and sitting by the bedside with joy, compassion and love.

THE GUEST HOUSE

In 1990, ZHP leased a beautiful old Victorian home on Page Street in San Francisco and opened its doors to dying patients and their families who had nowhere else to turn, and who looked to us for comfort in the last weeks and months of their lives. Lovingly referred to as the Guest House, our goal was to increase access to quality end-of-life care services for those most in need. Over the next 14 years, we welcomed hundreds of terminally ill guests into our home, providing critical care for low-income and underserved populations that had often been diagnosed with cancer or HIV/AIDS. Many of our residents were poor or homeless, had a history of substance abuse or mental illness and little or no health insurance. Zen Hospice Project quickly became a haven of kindness and compassion, one of the very few organizations in the Bay Area that was eager to serve anyone who needed our help.