Image: Joan Marston and Austin Marchand visit the National Museum in Bloemfontein (Image courtesy of Derek de Bruyn)
As Sunflower Children’s Hospice approaches its 30th anniversary, American Global Partners in Care intern Austin Marchand has travelled across South Africa recording the oral histories of those who helped shape the hospice and the wider children’s palliative care movement. His work is helping to preserve not only Sunflower’s remarkable legacy, but also the emerging history of children’s palliative care in South Africa.
For several weeks this July and August, 20-year-old American student Austin Marchand, an intern with Global Partners in Care, has travelled across South Africa recording oral histories from people who have been part of the Sunflower story.
Patients and families, nurses and doctors, volunteers, supporters, community members and partner organisations have all played a role in shaping Sunflower Children’s Hospice since its beginnings as St Nicholas Children’s Hospice in 1998. Their experiences are now being preserved through the Sunflower Legacy Project.
Austin, a pre-medical student and English major at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA, arrived in South Africa with an interest in medicine, theology and history, and a genuine curiosity about people and their stories.
That combination has made him an ideal oral historian.
More than a hospice history
The project is being undertaken with the generous guidance and support of Professor Indira Chowdhury, one of the founders of the Oral History Association in India and Dr Derek du Bruyn of the National Museum in Bloemfontein, who have both so generously shared their expertise in oral history and helped the team understand how personal memories can be preserved as an important part of our collective heritage.
Austin and Sunflower founder and pioneer of children’s palliative care, Sr Joan Marston, recently visited the National Museum in Bloemfontein to learn more about its oral history work.
What Austin has discovered through the interviews is that people often have far more to say than they initially expect.
“A relaxed interview set-up provides a safe space for interviewees to tell stories they would normally not share with others.”
The immediate goal of the Sunflower Legacy Project is to document the Sunflower Children’s Hospice’s history and ultimately produce a book celebrating the people and events that have shaped its journey.
But the significance of the project reaches much further.
Sunflower’s story is also part of the story of children’s palliative care in South Africa, a movement shaped by passionate individuals, families, healthcare professionals, hospices, volunteers and communities who recognised that children living with serious and life-limiting conditions deserved care that addressed not only their medical needs, but their emotional, social and spiritual needs too.
From Bloemfontein to Cape Town and Gauteng
Austin’s work did not stop in Bloemfontein.
After spending time at Sunflower interviewing people connected to the hospice, he travelled to Cape Town, where he has been recording further histories, before heading to Gauteng to continue gathering stories.
Alongside the Sunflower Legacy Project, Austin is working with Joan Marston and Palliative Care for Children South Africa (PatchSA) on an ambitious complementary initiative: documenting a national history of children’s palliative care in South Africa.
It is a project that recognises the urgency of capturing these stories while the pioneers, early practitioners and families who lived this history are still able to share their experiences.
There are still many voices to hear and many memories to preserve.
A global partnership with a personal connection
Austin’s internship is also a wonderful example of how international partnerships can create unexpected and lasting connections.
His placement through Global Partners in Care builds on an earlier connection between the organisation and Sunflower Children’s Hospice. Austin has been mentored and supported by Ethan Harned, another Global Partners in Care intern who worked with Sunflower in 2024, conducting research into adolescents living with HIV.
In this way, one young intern has passed the baton to another, creating a continuing thread between students from the United States and the South African children’s palliative care community.
For Austin, the experience has offered an opportunity to see children’s palliative care from a perspective very different from that of a textbook or lecture hall.
As he reflected during his time at Sunflower, many people think children’s palliative care is simply about end-of-life care. What he has encountered in South Africa is something much greater: helping children live as fully as possible, supporting families, relieving suffering and ensuring that no one faces serious illness alone.
He has also discovered something else – the extraordinary warmth of the people who have built and sustained this work.
A legacy for the future
As Austin prepares to return to North Carolina, there is a sense of both gratitude and unfinished work.
“We should have begun this many years ago, but the next best time is now,” reflects Sr Joan Marston.
The recordings gathered during Austin’s time in South Africa will become part of a lasting archive of Sunflower’s history. More importantly, they will help ensure that the lessons, challenges, innovations and humanity of the early years of children’s palliative care are not lost.
History is more than dates and milestones. It is found in the memories of the people who were there—the nurse who stayed late, the volunteer who never forgot a child, the parent who found support at an impossible time, the doctor who recognised an unmet need, and the pioneer who believed that children deserved something better.
These are the stories that shape a movement.
Through the Sunflower Legacy Project, and the emerging national history of children’s palliative care in South Africa, those stories are finally being gathered.
There are still many voices to listen to. Many memories to share. And many stories waiting to become part of the legacy of children’s palliative care in South Africa.
As Austin returns home this week, the work he has begun will continue, ensuring that the compassion, courage and commitment of those who came before us can inspire the generations who follow.
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