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Team Fun

Today, instead of our usual afternoon staff meeting the team met at Soap for Hope to volunteer. We helped shave soap, funnel shampoo, conditioner and body lotion into jugs, and we cut labels for soap packets. It was a great way to work together as a team doing something...
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Meet the Foundation House Team

It takes a team to run Foundation House smoothly, and this team is awesome! Under the leadership of Blake, our Housing Manager, we have Evan, Terry, Sharlene, Bruce and Justin working at the house. Evan and Blake run the morning meetings, with Sharlene as backfill and t...
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Meet the AMCS/ER Team

On "Meet the Team Tuesday", we wanted to highlight the great work Lesley, Conor and Cait do at Umbrella. These three amazing workers are located at Royal Jubilee and Victoria General Hospitals. Lesley works at the Jubilee on the Addiction Medicine Consult Service and ...
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Engaged for Good

Umbrella is extremely grateful to win this years Engaged for Good HR support through Engaged HR. Umbrella takes a lot of pride in our staff and we work hard to support them and engage them as long term partners. In order to do that, we have to consistently look at our pr...
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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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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...