Help Kate to make a difference in Hashimoto’s patients lives

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    raised of R13,440.00 goal goal
110% Funded
55 Donors

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To the members of Hashimoto's South Africa,

As many of you know, my Hashimoto’s journey is not an unusual one and many of you have shared the same or a similar experience as I did. I started off my journey on the allopathic path, first with my GP who diagnosed me as hypothyroid and then luckily being correctly diagnosed much later by my endocrinologist with our disease. I thought I was in good hands and I would soon be relieved of my debilitating symptoms. But of course, not being aware of the system that I was now caught up in, instead I spent the next 5 months falling apart as my health rapidly declined due to the completely inadequate treatment I received from these medical practitioners. Nearly a year later, it cost me not just my health but my job and pushed my relationship onto the rocks with an uncertain future.

In-between all of this, I had spontaneously started our group and thanks to all of you who were more experienced than I was, sharing your wisdom with me, I veered off onto the functional medicine path - and thank goodness I did! Because if I hadn't, I wouldn't currently be in remission as we speak. The functional medicine approach gave me my life back, as it is doing for so many of us in the group and around the world who are fortunate enough to also stumble onto this path. Had we known all of this and that functional medicine existed right at the very beginning of our journey, we could have not only avoided all the hardships we went through but fast tracked our recovery and saved ourselves from such unnecessary suffering! And what I went through personally is not nearly as devastating as some of the stories I have heard on the group.. What this has cost some of you has been absolutely heart breaking! You too could have been spared all of this, had you had the right information and treatment at the very start.

With this in mind, this is what has fuelled my passion for this group over the last 2 years now, in knowing that so many of you are still caught up in this system that is designed to fail us. This is why I spend every single free moment of my day tending to this group, sharing this vital information with as many of you as I possibly can so that you too are now aware of the functional medicine approach. Not only that, but also making sure that you have easy and quick access to life changing information when you need it so that you don't have to struggle to find it. All I honestly want for you is to recover and get your lives back! And even better, to walk away even healthier than you were before - even with a disease!

Having gone through this experience myself and now helping as many of you as I can to recover during this time has also shown me my life’s purpose.. Many of you have also very kindly pointed this out to me in the hope that I will embrace it and find a way to do this full time. If I could find a way to help Hashimoto's patients recover as a full time career and be able to earn a salary from this, I would honestly be the happiest person on the planet! Nothing could bring me more joy and purpose than this.. It is what I am working towards now.

But this is not exactly like a normal job that you can simply just apply for on Bizcommunity or Careers24 like you would as a graphic designer, accountant or architect! There are no positions out there titled “Hashimoto’s Dedicated Health Coach” or “Hashimoto’s Guide” or even “Hashimoto’s Recovery Specialist". They simply don't exist.. So where does one even begin? Especially when I don't have the funds at this stage to pay for a functional health coach certificate at R60 000 - R80 000 after draining all my savings covering the costs of medical bills etc over the last 2 years.. This is not exactly easy and the odds are certainly stacked against me with my current salary and circumstances!

But there is one way that I can get this going…

By building the first ever purely Hashimoto’s dedicated website in the world that will serve as a free step-by step recovery guide and the go to resource with everything you need to help you recover from this disease utilising the functional medicine approach. As one explores the website, you will be taken on a 'guided tour' through the information it contains and provided with useful tools to put this information into practise. It will address the following areas:



  • Understanding what your disease is and how you developed it so you can learn how to reverse it
  • A summary and introduction on the steps required to reverse your disease
  • Introduction to functional medicine and how it will help you recover taking a root cause approach
  • How to adapt your diet to be autoimmune friendly (Recipes, video how to tutorials, meal plans, etc)
  • Understanding supplementing and how to use this as an aid aside from diet
  • How to address your lifestyle and home to help you heal and be autoimmune friendly
  • Links to support groups around the world as well as beneficial resources (i.e doctors to follow, books and much more)
Currently, there is nothing out there dedicated purely to Hashimoto's patients like this and I'm sure like me, you too would have done anything to have had a tool such as this at your disposal in beginning of your journey. This would also be so invaluable to Hashimoto's patients that aren't part of a group such as ours or who have yet to discover one in their country. A website like this could do so much good, saving Hashimoto’s patients from having to sieve the internet to get this information in bits and pieces over time whilst battling with their health and receiving inadequate treatment. But hang on, so how am I supposed to earn a salary out of a resource that I am giving away for free?? That doesn't make much sense does it.. Well thats where this comes in:



~ My plan is to firstly offer advertising space to quality brands, practitioners, functional nutritionists, health coaches, authors, etc that are 100% suited to us Hashi’s and meet our highest standards. Through various packages offering advertising space to suit their budget, this will initially just pay towards the annual costs and upkeep of the website but eventually in time as this grows, I would like to use these funds to also cover the once off cost of my Functional Health Coach certificate through the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy so that I can offer qualified services through the website as a Hashimoto's dedicated functional health coach to those needing one on one guidance. Once this has been achieved, the funds will also eventually contribute towards a salary in time.

~ Added to this, I would also eventually like to sell some of my own products that I have been developing quietly in the background over the last year such as meal plans, recipes booklets, video courses / tutorials and much more for those who want to be given quick guided solutions to start their healing process.

This of course is a lot of work and won’t be something I can build in a day, it’s a self-constructed career that will take time to develop, which is why I have already started building the website to get the ball rolling asap with an aim to launch it as soon as possible next year! I still have lots to do but the skeleton is built and I am busy furiously working away at it each day to populate it with the necessary content.

All of this also unfortunately costs money to create of which I don't have enough funds at this stage to get everything going. So I am hoping that in reaching out to both my family, friends, fellow patients and the universe, that some much needed donations will be gifted to make this dream a reality! Currently, these are the estimated expenses that need to be covered just to get the website up and running of which I have rounded the figures off:

R4000: Professional E-Commerce Website Template, Domain and Email (for large 30+ page site) - This is the annual fee for the year.

R4000: Stock Photography (To populate the website with images, I require quite a few due to it’s size + buying in dollars through 123RF, Shutterstock, Stocksy, etc)

R4000: 2-3 hour profile photo shoot (For branding purposes across website / social media etc and for press releases / media kits, will most likely be more though but I'm hoping to negotiate) And then..

R1440: To cover the 12% deduction on funds raised via Go Get Funding (Their cut)

Total = R13 440

So as you can see, this is a lot for one person to cover for a project on their own and these things all add up even on a very tight shoe string budget. Although I have already started building the website, I won’t be able to go live with it until I pay for the template as above and have finished adding all the images and content to it which I am currently working on. (Just out of interest, what I am producing would be worth a minimum of R40 000 - R60 000 to design had I gone through a professional web design company so it is a very high quality website that I am doing very affordably utilising my graphic design and marketing skills. Super excited to show you guys what I've done once it's ready - it's so different to the other websites on our topic out there that either look homemade or are clinical and commercial in comparison! This is a website for patients by a patient so it has a very different look and feel that is much more warm, down to earth and genuine!)

So with this all in mind, if you would like to donate to my project and future dream career, in helping me with the initial steps required to make it happen, I would be eternally grateful for your support! It would mean so much… This website will not just help me at the end of the day to create a career out of my passion but will help me to achieve my dream of helping thousands of patients around South Africa and the world who too would benefit from a resource like this. Every cent will count in contributing to changing someones life for the better and if 400 people were to donate just R34 I will be more than able to achieve this dream for which I would never be able to thank you enough!

Thank you so much for also reading this loooong message to explain my project and why I am outsourcing funding for this, hard to explain briefly but I hope this covered it :) If you have any questions, please do let me know on the group post for this and I will gladly answer you on them!

Many thanks - from my heart!!
Kate Higgs

Founder & Admin ~ Hashimoto's South Africa



Organizer

Donors

  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 27, 2019
Amount Hidden
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
R50.00
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
R50.00

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Donors & Comments

55 donors
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 27, 2019
Amount Hidden
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
R50.00
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
R50.00
  • Anonymous
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
  • Good luck with your venture!!

Amount Hidden
  • June Twomey
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
  • Kate thankyou for all the help you have given me wishing you all the best

R300.00
R150.00
  • Marion Furness
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
  • Thanks Kate ! Trusting that the information on the website brings health and wholeness to all those that suffer with Hashimotos .💜

R500.00
R150.00
  • Kathy Mann
  • Donated on Oct 14, 2019
R100.00
R500.00
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ZAR14,858
raised of R13,440.00 goal
110% Funded
55 Donors

No more donations are being accepted at this time. Please contact the campaign owner if you would like to discuss further funding opportunities

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