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The Flower Empower Program from Dream Foundation

Brett Grimes

· Terminal Illnesses
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A resident of Santa Barbara, California, Brett Grimes works in the venture strategies group as managing director at a financial institution. Active in his community, Brett Grimes supports several organizations via financial donations, including Dream Foundation, a charity that provides emotional and psychosocial support to adults who have terminal illnesses.

Thanks to support from its network of volunteers and health care organizations, Dream Foundation fulfills over 2,500 dreams per year for people ranging from 18 to over 65 years old. The bulk of these dreams are vacation-related and provided to individuals diagnosed with types of cancer.

Alongside its Dreams program, Dream Foundation operates Flower Empower, a volunteer-driven program. Based in Santa Barbara, the program was implemented in 1994. Since then, it has delivered donated flower bouquets to people in cancer centers, hospices, and private homes in the area. Alongside these flowers, community members are gifted artisan cards, chocolates, and fresh-baked cookies, some of which are hand-made by local individuals, school children, and other groups.

Flower Empower delivers roughly 150 bouquets a week based on referrals from nurses, doctors, and cancer centers. Hospices and elder support organizations also make referrals for who should receive gifts through the program, as do many other related organizations. In 2017, the program arranged upwards of 8,300 bouquets and logged more than 3,360 volunteer hours.