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Podcast Season 2/E11 – Stefanie

In today’s episode, we sit down with Stefanie who has a personal recovery journey full of resiliency and self actualization. Stefanie shares insights on the current state of our community as her desire to give back and help those in addiction has seen her support a wide s...
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Victoria Foundation Visit

Today, our friends from the Victoria Foundation, Tracy and Sushil, came to Foundation House for a tour and to learn more about the work we are doing in recovery housing. Evan, Erik and Sharlene shared about the house, the history and Erik shared his experience as a resid...
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Grade 10 students

Tuesday Evan and Rebecca spent several hours with the Grade 10 students at St Michaels. This was a very engaged group and many stayed after to ask questions. Our team fielded more than 20 questions about substance use and how it impacts their brains, their families, thei...
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Adios Albina!

Today Sean had his last day at Albina. Sean is moving into an Outreach role at Umbrella, but has really captured the hearts of the residents and our Our Place partners. They had a little going away shin dig for him. Josh is staying put at Albina and our new Lucy is joi...
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Grade 9 students

After kicking the week off with presentations to the grade 12 students at St Michaels, Evan and Rebecca ended the week with the grade 9 students. There was a lot of differences, not just their age, but the engagement, the questions, the curiosity and more. Some of the fa...
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Recovery Capital Conference

This last week Adriana, Jarret and Louise from Umbrella headed to the 8th annual Recovery Capital Conference in Calgary. The days were full, and the team came back filled with a renewed commitment to the work we do. In addition to the vast learning that took place, thi...
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St Michaels School

Today, Evan and Rebecca presented to the grade 12 students at St Michael University School. There were about 150 students present, as well as a few teachers, and a lot of interest, engagement and questions. Evan and Rebecca stayed after to field some additional question...
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Hep C Education

Today, some of the Umbrella team spent the afternoon learning about HEP C. Daryl Luster, Peer Advocate and Mentor for HEP C based out of Vancouver, joined the team to share about his own journey, misconceptions, stigma, prevention and treatment. The Umbrella staff learn...
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Annual Costco Trip

About once a year Sharlene drags Evan to Costco to do the house shopping. Today Zack was working at the hospital so Evan had to step in and push one of the two carts and follow a carefully crafted grocery list... a big ask. Costco is Evan's least favourite place, and it...
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VNFC Community Fair

Yesterday, Louise from Umbrella manned the table for RAAC (Rapid Access Addictions Clinic) at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre's annual community care fair. This was a very important community care fair, helping people learn about the services that the RAAC clinic o...