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So…we bought a house!!!!

Today at noon, Umbrella became the owners of Foundation House, the supportive recovery house for men we have been operating for almost 5 years. The owner, Clive, pictured below with our ED Sharlene, offered Umbrella the house below market value earlier last year, with...
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Chamber Lunch

Evan and Sharlene spent the lunch hour getting a comprehensive update of budget 2020 from the Minister of Finance. Lots of good stuff in there, especially liking the affordable housing and poverty reduction plans. There was some good conversations had, and new friends m...
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CFB Esquimalt

Today Lesley and Cait, both on the Addiction Medicine Consult Service Team, spent the day at CFB Esquimalt for the service provider expo. These events are great opportunities to meet new people, have great conversations and break down stigma. Lots of people stopped by, ...
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Sober Celebrations

Tonight was a night full of sobriety, gratitude, friendship and celebration. Two of our Foundation House residents celebrated their one year birthdays. To change it up, we invited the residents, alumni, family, staff and friends to come celebrate at our office space. T...
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Meet the ICM Team

Formerly the SAMI Team, ICM (Intensive Case Management) Team is a partnership program with Island Health and AVI. This team provides meaningful support to some of our most vulnerable community members. Nicole and Justin offer outreach support with both kindness and comp...
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Dad’s Wellness Group Spring 2020

Umbrella is pleased to share that we have opened registration for the second run of the Dad's Wellness Group. This low barrier group is appropriate for all types of dads struggling with issues related to substance use; new dads, step-dads, dads with or without custody of...
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Presentation

Today, Karen Urbanoski from Canadian Insititute for Substance Use Research at UVIC and Umbrella's Team Lead, Evan James presented to over 100 interested individuals about the different understandings of addiction and implications for treatment. This dialogue provided a...
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Outreach Team

Check out this photo of Umbrella's awesome outreach team. This group genuinely care about clients, our community and each other. Evan, our Team Lead is in the centre, with the outreach folks around him. Some have specialities like Jake on Saltspring Island and Cait our...
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Our favourite photographer

We have a favourite photographer and we want to tell everyone about her! Erin Ruff has been taking our staff, board and dog photos for many years, and captured our last hockey game too. We just updated our staff photos - check them out! She is wonderful to work with an...
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Staff Fun

Every Wednesday the team gets together for a staff meeting. We rotate chairs weekly and this week was Conor's turn to facilitate the meeting. Everyone has been so busy and working hard that Conor planned something fun, and it was a hit! We all had to try and guess the ...