About Us
- About
Who We Are
Heartful Voyage is a nonprofit organization based in Gainesville, Florida. We support families whose children are receiving treatment at hospitals in Gainesville and at children’s hospitals in other communities across the country. Our work begins with housing, but it does not end there.
Our mission is to ease the practical and emotional burdens of childhood hospitalization by providing family-centered housing, compassionate assistance, wellness support, and connections to trusted community resources.
We help create the stability families need so parents and caregivers can focus on being present for their child.
We envision a future in which no family is separated or left without support because safe lodging, practical assistance, or community resources are beyond their reach.
Our vision is to build a growing network of homes, mobile accommodations, partners, donors, and volunteers that helps hospital families remain together wherever specialized medical care takes them.
Family Togetherness
We believe children benefit from being surrounded by the people who love them. Everything we do begins with helping families remain close.
Compassion in Action
Compassion means more than expressing concern. It means responding with practical, thoughtful, and timely support.
Dignity
Every family deserves to be treated with respect, privacy, understanding, and care, regardless of background or financial circumstances.
- Our Story
Heartful Voyage began with Irie Gellis.
Irie was born in September 2023. Less than a day later, her mother, Olivia, sensed that something was wrong. Doctors discovered that Irie had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital heart defect.
After being transferred between hospitals, Irie was accepted for specialized treatment at UF Health Shands in Gainesville. Her parents, Olivia and Albert, relocated several hours from home without knowing when they would be able to return.
Their family rebuilt daily life around Irie’s hospital room. Olivia and Albert took turns staying beside her overnight while caring for her older sister, Faith, maintaining their business, and managing the practical realities of living away from home.
Irie spent 333 days in the hospital. She received a lifesaving donor heart on March 12, 2024, and overcame several significant medical complications before leaving the hospital with her family on August 12, 2024.
During that time, Olivia and Albert witnessed other parents struggling to find affordable housing, meals, transportation, childcare, emotional support, and a way to remain close to their hospitalized children.
They understood those struggles because they had lived them.
Heartful Voyage was created to transform that experience into meaningful support for other families. What began as one family’s medical journey is becoming a community of people committed to ensuring that families do not face these challenges alone.
Our Approach
Every medical journey is different. Some families need temporary housing. Others need help finding local resources, emotional support, alternative lodging, or someone who understands the urgency of their situation.
Our approach is personal, flexible, and family-centered. We listen to each family, review the circumstances, assess available resources, and work to identify the most appropriate form of assistance. When we cannot provide housing directly, we try to connect families with other organizations, accommodations, hospital resources, or potential sources of support.
We may not be able to solve every challenge, but every family who contacts us will be treated with care, honesty, and respect.
Help Them
Who We Serve
Heartful Voyage supports parents, guardians, siblings, and caregivers of children receiving hospital-based or specialized medical care.
Assistance is considered individually and may depend on the family’s needs, distance from home, housing availability, location of treatment, expected duration of the hospital stay, and available funding.
Why We Exist
When a child faces a medical crisis, families should never have to face it alone.
We exist to keep families close, reduce practical burdens, and surround parents and caregivers with the support they need to remain strong throughout their child’s treatment.
