For the past couple of months, we have referred to our charitable foundation, CoSozo Care, within our pages. CoSozo Care is still very much in the initial phases of being developed, but it is going to be such a primary part of CoSozo that I wanted to say more about what its purpose is, and to highlight what we hope to accomplish with this foundation. Especially in light of entering the holiday season, when there is a feeling of gratitude in the air and a desire to help others, this seems a particularly appropriate time to discuss CoSozo Care in greater detail.

Much as the holidays seem to alight in all of us such an expansive feeling of love and support for not only those we love in our lives, but also those who may need a helping hand, we want to empower people with CoSozo. Whether within the pages of CoSozo Living, connecting people through CoSozo Sources, through the CoSozo products, or as a result of CoSozo Care’s activities, we want to provide information and resources to individuals who may not have had those same opportunities without CoSozo.

For those of you who are new to CoSozo, CoSozo Living focuses on bringing forward wellness information, possibly new research on a traditional medical approach, or an introduction to an alternative approach, or even just information that can help balance your life more. Much of CoSozo Living is presented on our website, www.cosozo.com, with free print copies of the magazine currently distributed in Michigan, with plans to expand to neighboring states soon.

CoSozo Sources is our print and online directory of providers for all areas of wellness, including traditional and alternative medicine, green resources, and practitioners who assist with communication, consciousness, etc. Our first print version became available in October 2008 and will be updated each quarter.

CoSozo Care will be a very big part of CoSozo’s family, especially in the current economy, with our current health care policies and practices. I read so many stories of individuals and families who are hurting as a result of either inadequate health insurance or as a result of not having any health insurance whatsoever. What we are hoping to do with CoSozo Care is to help alleviate some of the financial burden for individuals and their families by providing financial assistance to receive treatments that they might not be eligible for otherwise.

This is the time of year when many of us seem to remember others more than at other times of the year. I’ve always been somewhat amazed by how the collective heart of the world seems to expand during the holidays. There seem to be more spontaneous acts of kindness, more people who go out of their way to be thoughtful and helpful even to people they don’t know. While I’m sure it’s not that people care more about others during the holiday season, it may very well be that people just act on those feelings more during the holidays than at any other time of the year.

My hope is that with CoSozo Care, we can help those in need feel like they are being showered with the love and support that is so prominently displayed during the holiday season at just the time they may need it most. As anyone who has had a health concern knows, the impact on your life and on the life of your family is immediate, and when you can receive help that alleviates some of that burden and possibly even helps you to heal, there can be no greater gift.

CoSozo Care speaks most closely to some of the original reasons why I first started CoSozo, and I just know that we can do a lot of really wonderful things through the money we will raise for this organization. I remember a couple of years ago when I had a need to find a transportation company that would help fly my terminally ill loved one home. At the time, we had tried lots of different treatments, and ultimately she decided to try a new treatment outside the United States.

Unfortunately, the treatment didn’t work, and we needed to get her home immediately. I was fortunate enough to have enough connections to find out about many companies that I had never known existed that provided such services. Unfortunately, many of the larger, more established companies that provided such transport also had clauses stating that if the patient had received any form of alternative treatment during the illness, he or she would not be eligible for the service.

At the time it was so bittersweet—to discover that there really are companies out there that specialize in privately transporting critically ill individuals home from wherever they are—exactly what we needed during those emotionally dark, middle-of-the-night phone calls when my loved one took a sharp turn for the worse. Then to discover that just because she had elected to receive an alternative treatment over the course of fighting her health challenge, she was automatically ineligible for transport.

There are also thousands, possibly even millions, of individuals and families who are currently struggling to pay for their needed medications and health treatments. Health insurance often doesn’t cover all of the treatments that are required, most certainly for alternative treatments but also for conventional treatments.

I’ll never forget the special I saw with a family whose son had a heart condition and were advised to divorce and put all of their money in the father’s name so the mother and son could receive state aid in order to get the treatment the son required. Complete lunacy. There have to be alternatives that we can take to get the help to people who need it other than splitting up families. That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The primary purpose of CoSozo Care will be to assist individuals and families to pay for medical expenses and treatments they need but can’t pay for. I am hopeful that we can also find other ways we can help out the families that need assistance. When your loved one is sick, there are so many other things that need to be done, whether it’s finding out what resources are available, helping to care for children, getting to appointments, you name it. CoSozo Care will focus on fundraising and will have a review board that will help identify those individuals who need assistance. We are looking for established health practitioners and specialists to serve on the board.

I am so excited about CoSozo Care because this foundation will be able to directly impact the lives of individuals who just need some help. That’s what CoSozo is about—helping each other to live better, healthier lives. Especially in today’s economy, when I think about the possibilities of CoSozo Care, the potential of CoSozo Care to help families, the impact that we can have for families by providing this kind of assistance is that much greater.

I know I have people in my own life who have made decisions about their health care to accept possibly lesser procedures or not the fully recommended course of treatment because of the limitations of their insurance to cover those expenses. I also have, like I’m sure many of you do, loved ones who have lost their homes.

It is such a tenuous time, with many families having to choose between getting the health care they need and keeping their homes. What a wonderful gift it would be to be able to provide some kind of financial relief during those very difficult times in a family’s life together! I’ve also come to realize that help can come in all kinds of different shapes and forms.

For some families, the need is concentrated in the financial arena. For other families, the need would be met in the form of some other kind of assistance. Some families are grieving a loss or having trouble adjusting to new living arrangements or limitations and could be assisted by being connected with the right resources in their area.

Other families may need some relief with providing for the other members of the family through prepared meals or transportation or house-cleaning services or even things like air-filtration systems that can help with the improved health of all of the family members. The possibilities are limitless in the impact that one individual, and yes, even one company, can have on the life of another.

CoSozo was started, in part, because I just couldn’t believe that we as individuals could do nothing about what’s happening in our health care. Yes I do believe that something is drastically wrong with our health care system, with what’s covered in our insurance policies and what isn’t. I also believe that when any of our lives are touched by a health care crisis, we would do anything we could in our power to help our loved ones.

Undoubtedly, I know to the core of who I am that there is much more power in many than in just one individual, and the power of many people to effect change is unstoppable. Perhaps that is part of what makes the holiday season always so magical to me—that even though there are millions of people throughout the year who go out of their way to help others, perhaps there are just so many more of them giving more to others during the holidays that it’s just palpable in the air!

CoSozo Care will take all of those powerful ideas and beliefs and will put them into action. With your help, we can begin to provide some assistance to those individuals and families who need it most. The efforts of CoSozo Care will begin in earnest at the turn of the new year in 2009, but we very much are now seeking credentialed experts in the health care industry to serve to help with our programming functions and all of the numerous initial decisions that will need to be made for the foundation.

CoSozo Care is a foundation that will take the fundamentals of the rest of the CoSozo entities and apply them in a way that provides direct and immediate assistance to those in need. Together, we can provide help in a way that our established policies and systems in health care currently are not.

Together, we can help to fill the gaps that are preventing millions of us from getting the help we need. If you have an interest in helping CoSozo Care to serve, either through donations once the foundation is firmly established or by serving on its review board, please contact me at candrew@cosozo.com.

Thank you!

~posted by Christine