Calling all Faith Communities!!
Dear Faith Leader,
Your voice can help transform how we talk about health and end-of-life care in Waterloo Wellington—changing the culture from one that doesn’t talk about crucial health and end-of-life matters, to one that does.
An Interfaith Committee has been formed to focus specifically on engaging faith communities in these Advance Care Planning conversations. The committee is comprised of members from the following faith communities: Muslim, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Mennonite and Baha’i.
As faith leaders, we see how avoiding conversations about health and end-of-life care can leave family members in the dark. Confusion about a loved one’s wishes can result in strife at the bedside, increased grief and depression for caregivers, and lasting damage in relationships among the people we love the most.
As a result of this, we aim to reach people where they live, work, and pray with the message that talking about our health and end-of-life care wishes is a gift we give our loved ones.
This is where you come in.
As our region’s Interfaith Committee on Advance Care Planning, we are asking you to commit to having conversations with your faith community about wishes, values and beliefs for health and end-of-life care. We invite you to do this at your regular faith gathering during the week of November 10-19, 2017 by incorporating your own faith teachings and beliefs about health and end-of-life care. It’s that easy! We would like you to “plant the seed” during this week to inspire your community to begin thinking about these important conversations.
Time to Talk is our local campaign designed specifically to encourage all faith communities to have conversations about wishes, values and beliefs for health and end-of-life care. Time to Talk is based off an initiative called The Conversation Sabbath created by The Conversation Project in the United States. We can be proud to say that we are the first community in Canada to participate in this initiative!
We want as many faith communities as possible engaging in these Conversations Worth Having during the week of November 10-19! In 2016, we had 19 different faith communities participate and we want to double participation for 2017!
If you would like to participate, please register with us so we can be sure to provide you with supporting materials. Click on the following link to register: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TimeToTalkWW
We hope you will join us!
Sincerely,
Anne Quinn Wallace, Elizabeth McNair, Hinda Hassan, Kathy Rana, Margaret Pemberton-Pigott, Monika Wiesner (The Advance Care Planning Interfaith Committee)
