The need for JoeAnna's House was real for this BC family

One day after an Oliver BC couple’s world exploded suddenly into full-blown chaos, a Kelowna-forged partnership launched a plan geared to make everything better.

Matti Koivisto and Sarah Baker's baby arrived far too early, on October 4 last year, at only 35 weeks gestation. Their tiny son, Colt Baker, was immediately flown by air ambulance for emergency medical care in Surrey, and later transferred closer to home, to the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) at Kelowna General Hospital.

With ironic timing, the “Better Together” campaign, spear-headed by the Kelowna General Hospital Foundation, was announced the next day on Oct. 5 and, on the strength of a $1 million pledge, Kelowna’s JoeAnna’s House initiative was cleared for take-off.

For out-of-towners Matti and Sarah, it was too early to benefit from a stay at JoeAnna’s House. Their best days with Baby Colt would be their stay at Ronald McDonald House, a warm and welcoming place to stay close by the Surrey hospital.

“Until you go through something like this, you have no idea what a difference it makes! Ronald McDonald House (RMH) saved our family! It brought us together with other families dealing with the same issues and totally changed our perception of our situation. It gave us hope," explains Matti.

Matti is uncontainable in his praise for RMH . “It was amazing, an absolute game-changer! We’ve made lifelong friends and still talk to people from across Canada. It’s incredibly hard to explain how much we needed that.”

Transferred back to the NICU at KGH, their tiny trooper baby continued to benefit from excellent care and overcame even more obstacles. But it took a toll on his parents to constantly have to drive to and from the hospital, feeling pain every time they had to go away and leave their baby behind.

JoeAnna's house will be the solution to keep families close to their loved ones receiving care at KGH, and will be a place to build relationships and find some peace.

Looking back, Matti credits Ronald McDonald House with drawing their family closer together through the crisis that could have spun them apart. “Without a doubt,” he says, “that is 100 per cent attributable to having a welcoming place to connect with other families going through similar experiences. Just knowing you’re not the only ones - that made a huge difference to our family.”

You will find Matti and Sarah and their two boys, age four and almost one, in the front row cheering on JoeAnna’s House in Kelowna.

In 2017, a conversation between the KGH Foundation and Prestige Hotels & Resorts re-ignited a dormant vision. When the company stepped forward with a $1 million gift to initiate the project, JoeAnna’s House moved.

JoeAnna’s House will be built on the corner of Royal Avenue and Abbott Street, the current site of a hospital staff parking lot. Construction is set to begin this October, with an anticipated opening in the fall of 2019.

The 20-unit building will provide affordable and comfortable accommodation for family members needing to stay near KGH. The building will provide common areas including a shared kitchen, communal dining space, a media/entertainment room, an exercise room, a family/consultation room, computer/internet facilities and guest laundry facilities.

JoeAnna's House addresses a long-standing and growing need. KGH is now the leading referral hospital for over 750,000 residents in the southern interior. At any given time, one in four beds at KGH is occupied by a patient from outside the Central Okanagan.

The fundraising campaign to raise the $8 million necessary to build and open JoeAnna's house, dubbed ‘Better Together’, is a double entendre that encompasses KGH patients better off with families close by, and families better off with accommodation within a supportive community.

JoeAnna’s House is also the logical extension of the spirit and vision of Josef (Joe) and Anna Huber, founders of Prestige Hotels and Resorts. The elder Hubers’ son-in-law, Terry Schneider explained at the campaign launch that the Huber family wanted to honour Joe and Anna by “creating something that would reflect the kind of people that they were.” Their commitment to generosity, kindness and hospitality is, in essence, the JoeAnna’s House vision.

“It all ties in to the feeling of home,” says Schneider. “The timing felt right to all of us. The whole family is on board.”

Bringing JoeAnna’s House forward, from a dream to bricks and mortar reality, will keep families together, a place to rest and relax within steps of a loved one’s bedside, a place to give and receive encouragement from other families navigating a similar, difficult path.

Families from out of town - from rural areas and small communities – have had to find their own accommodation to be able to stay near their children or other family members who are patients at KGH. Motels in Kelowna are not inexpensive, and in summer, vacancies are often non-existent. It’s not unheard of for families to resort to sleeping in their cars overnight.

It’s heart-wrenching enough for a family to cope when their premature infant is in care in the neo-natal intensive care unity (NICU) at Kelowna General Hospital. Or when their child has to be admitted as a patient. Families from communities far from KGH have relied upon and appreciated the practical help and emotional support from KGH social workers and caring community-based charities. But without a place to stay, the support can be a patchwork quilt effort. JoeAnna’s House will upgrade support to a cozy down comforter.

The “Better Together” campaign has found favor among businesses and agencies in Kelowna, as well as in Thomson-Okanagan and Kootenay-Boundary communities and districts. The fundraising goal is already past the halfway point.

Soon ‘come-from-away’ families will get through their crisis with a little more help from friends of JoeAnna’s House – because we’re all “Better Together”.