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Zen Hospice Program

Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) provides a spectrum of collaborative services in end-of-life care, including residential hospice care, volunteer caregiver support, and public education events.

Mission

- To establish and maintain a program of hospice services, which will collaborate with public and private community organizations in the Bay Area, to mindfully and compassionately serve people approaching death.
- To train and support volunteers to assist people facing life threatening illness, and their family and friends, in a manner which best meets what they understand to be their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
- To establish and maintain a residential hospice in San Francisco to provide appropriate services for people in the final days of their lives.
- To provide educational programs with a foundation in Buddhist teachings that foster awareness and compassion in facing death, and whose influence can be felt both locally and globally.

History

Zen Hospice was founded in 1987 as a program of the San Francisco Zen Center. Social upheaval and times of personal crises provide opportunity for great compassion. The birth of ZHP coincided with the first decade of AIDS, an epidemic of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. ZHP volunteers found that caring for people with AIDS or cancer was, in itself, a kind of spiritual practice.

Initially, ZHP brought their services to indigent cancer patients living in the streets or in small residential hotels. In 1988, they began working in partnership with Laguna Honda Hospital to offer hospice services in an institutional setting. They began caring for people at their residential Guest House in 1990.

Link here to visit the website of the Zen Hospice Program.