About Us
- About
About Heartful Voyage
Heartful Voyage is a Gainesville, Florida-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to helping families stay together during a loved one’s cardiac journey. We provide welcoming homes and practical support for families receiving care at UF Health Shands, home to one of the nation’s leading cardiac programs. We believe that when someone is fighting for their life, their family should never have to worry about where they will sleep, how they will get through the day, or whether they can afford to stay close to the person they love.
Heartful Voyage was founded after our family spent 333 days at UF Health Shands while our daughter, Irie, awaited and ultimately received a life-saving heart transplant. During that time, we learned that healing extends far beyond the walls of a hospital room. Families need rest, community, encouragement, and practical support just as much as they need exceptional medical care. That experience inspired us to create the organization we wish had existed for us—a place where cardiac families can find not only housing, but also compassion, understanding, and a community that truly knows what they’re going through.
Today, Heartful Voyage operates two homes in Gainesville for families traveling to UF Health Shands for cardiac care, and we are expanding rapidly to meet the growing need. Our vision is to continue adding homes and other lodging options so more families can remain together throughout treatment. Through the generosity of our community, volunteers, and local partners, we are building more than places to stay—we are creating a network of hope that allows families to focus on what matters most: being together during life’s most challenging moments.
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.
When our family relocated to Gainesville for our daughter Irie’s medical care, we expected to be here for a few weeks. Instead, Gainesville became our home. Over the course of 333 days at UF Health Shands, our family experienced extraordinary compassion from physicians, nurses, therapists, neighbors, local businesses, and complete strangers who carried us through the hardest season of our lives. This community helped save our daughter, and in many ways, it saved our family too. When Irie finally received her heart transplant and we were able to leave the hospital, we knew we wanted to build our future here and find a meaningful way to give back.
Before founding Heartful Voyage, we spent years building a family business centered on hospitality—creating welcoming homes where people could rest, connect, and feel cared for. Looking back, we realized those skills had prepared us for something much bigger. Today, we use that experience to create homes for cardiac families facing the same uncertainty we once did. Heartful Voyage is our way of giving back to the community that gave so much to us, ensuring that more families can remain together, close to the people they love, while receiving world-class cardiac care in Gainesville.
Our Approach
Every cardiac journey is unique, and so is every family we serve. Some families need long-term housing while waiting for a heart transplant, while others may need help finding temporary childcare or school options for siblings who have relocated to Gainesville. Others simply need a hot meal, access to laundry facilities, or connections to trusted local resources during an overwhelming time. At Heartful Voyage, we meet each family where they are, providing personalized support that allows them to focus on what matters most—the healing of the person they love. As our community of donors, volunteers, and partners continues to grow, so does our ability to expand our homes, services, and impact for cardiac families in Gainesville.
Help Them
Who We Serve
Heartful Voyage supports cardiac patients of all ages and the loved ones who stand beside them—including parents, guardians, spouses, partners, siblings, adult children, caregivers, and other family members. We believe you’re never too old to need an advocate, a support system, or someone by your side during a cardiac journey.
Assistance is considered individually and may depend on each family’s needs, distance from home, housing availability, location of treatment, expected length of stay, and available resources.
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 loved one’s treatment.
