Community Collaboration

Last week, at the Songhees Wellness Centre, AVI hosted a community collaboration to discuss the overdose crisis. The forum consisted of people with lived experience, family members and service providers from Victoria. In addition to breakout groups, there was a panel of ...

Balancing our Minds Conference

Yesterday, Evan and Conor from Umbrella joined youth from all over the island at the Balancing our Minds Conference at Bear Mountain Arena. The youth were very engaging, curious and interested in Umbrella and addiction. Many great conversation and interactions were had!...

MHSU Advisory Committee 2nd annual awards

Kindness and compassion are ageless and secular. That’s what Island Health’s Mental Health Substance Use (MHSU) Advisory Committee discovered when considering nominations for its awards program. Both of this year’s recipients responded with dignity and fairness to the...

This is why we do the work we do…

Today, a young girl gave us this card she made. We had helped her dad a few years ago. A genuine and heartfelt reminder to never give up on anyone. Ever.

Happy Administrative Professionals Day

Today is Administrative Professionals Day, and Umbrella happens to have THE BEST admin person working with us. Bronwyn is a true gift to the team, clients and the community. She is the backbone of our organization and she keeps all of us on track. We are grateful to have ...

CVTP spring session

Last night was the first of eight sessions of the Community Volunteer Training Program. This program is a partnership between Umbrella and Coolaid's REES program, fully funded by the United Way. We offer this program twice a year, spring and fall. If you are currently ...

Happy 2nd birthday to us!

On April 1, 2015 Umbrella took over the operations of a men's recovery house known as Foundation House. We have made some improvements, made some changes and added a huge dose of love! Since we took over, we have helped almost 40 men and one beautiful, but very frightene...

Lunch, learning and team building

Today was an amazing afternoon at Umbrella! We asked a long time friend of Umbrella, Graydon, to facilitate a workshop on boundaries, work/life balance, recovery, self care and more. What a great team building session and opportunity for sharing and support. We are all...

Welcome to our new site!

We're proud to announce the launch of our new site – a new digital platform for us to communicate our services with our clients, who we are as a team, as well as the latest news straight from the Umbrella offices. Click through to explore, and we can't wait to connect wit...

Mental Health Awareness Day

On February 22, Royal Bay High School hosted their annual Mental Health Awareness Day, and Umbrella was thrilled to be a part of this important event for a second year. Chris spoke with a classroom about substance use, trauma, and shared a bit of his personal story, while...