12/02/2025
In many parts of the world, end-of-life care begins not in a hospital or clinical environment, but at a kitchen table, with comfort measures being discussed and tenderly managed.
In Uganda, hospice teams travel miles down red-dirt roads to bring pain relief and companionship into people’s homes—often supported by neighbors and faith communities who refuse to let anyone face dying alone.
In Kerala, India, the Neighborhood Network in Palliative Care trains ordinary citizens to visit people who are seriously ill, organize food and transport, and sit in the hard conversations. Doctors and nurses are important—but so are neighbors, aunties, and friends.
In the UK, many hospices are independent charities that feel more like big family homes: gardens, shared kitchens, pets, living rooms where someone might be laughing and someone else is quietly holding vigil.
In the Netherlands, small “almost-home houses” offer just a few bedrooms where volunteers and families share the daily care, while community doctors and nurses come in as needed. It’s hospice as a normal part of neighborhood life.
These are not high-tech solutions. They are human ones.
Here in the US, we have advanced medical hospice benefits and incredible clinicians. But we’ve also deeply medicalized dying. Too many people in Chicagoland still spend their final weeks in busy hospitals or institutional settings, far from the warmth and rhythms of an ordinary home. Families are exhausted. People feel “discharged” instead of held.
Wally’s Hearth exists to help change that.
We’re working to open the first social-model hospice home in Illinois—a small, home-like space where people can spend their last weeks surrounded by comfort, community, and skilled hospice teams who come to them. A place rooted in the belief that no one should have to die feeling like a burden, or like they’ve fallen through the cracks of our healthcare system.
This Giving Tuesday, I’m asking you to help us build this local expression of a global movement.
* If you’ve ever sat at a bedside and thought, “There has to be a better way,” please consider making a gift to Wally’s Hearth today. Your support helps us open our doors in Chicagoland and grow a model of care that the Midwest—and the U.S.—desperately needs*
Tax-deductible donation via check, zelle (no fees taken out) or on our website through GiveButter
Learn more about our vision: wallyshearth.org (expanded and updated version soon! All part of fundraising, hint hint)
Thank you for helping us bring more humanity, beauty, and choice to the end of life!
