Addiction is Close To Home for many Canadians, with 1 in 4 personally impacted by it. The stigma and shame of addiction continues to cloud open discussion, imprisoning healing conversations. When a person struggles with addiction, it affects them and their loved ones, making them feel hopeless and trapped.
There is hope! Addiction is a treatable health issue. With effective treatment and support, individuals in recovery can go on to lead happy, healthy, productive lives. Healing conversations become possible, opening the door to a journey of restored family relationships.
We are grateful that so many have already donated to the Close to Home capital campaign to date. This generous support is transforming the lives of those fighting addiction, bringing hope and healing to families in Waterloo Region. Because of your generosity, we have reached our goal of raising $2 million to create a new residential addiction treatment facility, with improved dignity, expanded programming and access.
Thank you!
Since Fall 2016, we have seen the devastating impact of the opioid crisis and the need for addiction treatment services to grow. That, along with new, designated funding for addiction treatment made us recognize that our existing renovation plans would lead to a fully utilized building upon opening, without opportunity to meet future needs. Your support has inspired us to dream bigger. To learn more, please click on the “Dreaming Bigger” icon to the right.
The need for progressive addiction treatment services in Waterloo Region is at an all-time high, with more people dying from opioid overdoses every year. This year in Ontario, 1 person will die every 13 hours from an opioid overdose. Unfortunately, we’re setting new records.
House of Friendship, a leading provider of addiction treatment serving more than 650 men and women from across the province every year, started treatment with men’s residential addiction services in 1975. For more than 40 years, the current facility at 174 King Street North has helped men find freedom from addiction. Unfortunately, it is no longer sustainable.
This small, packed, 130-year-old deteriorating farm house, surrounded by university student housing and parties, without space for privacy or a healing environment, requires a change in how and where addiction treatment is provided. Watch a video of the current facility here.
The time is now to provide men’s addiction treatment in a healing place of greater dignity, with expanded programming and access, as a start to a journey of transforming the way addiction treatment is delivered in Waterloo Region.
To do this, House of Friendship has purchased 562 Concession Road, Cambridge, formerly Haven House. This residential treatment facility will continue to provide healing and hope. It will be renovated and repurposed, this time for men in search of recovery. Along with offering residential services to men, day treatment and community programming services will be available to both men and women.
To fulfill this vision, a $3 million Close To Home capital campaign has been launched to purchase and renovate this property into a vibrant centre of hope and healing.
Your support is needed! Your generous donation will provide a transformed treatment centre to enhance recovery. Improved recovery benefits the community by reducing human suffering and breakdown of families, reducing crime and hospital emergency visits, and lowering health care costs, along with increased safety, health and hope.
With the current opioid crisis claiming a record number of lives in our Region (called a “tidal wave” by Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin) the timing has never been more urgent.
Please consider how you can help be part of Close to Home, transforming the lives of men like Damien, Greg and JP – and that of their wives, children or parents, and Waterloo Region as a whole.
Join us to create a hope-filled future for our sons, our fathers, our uncles, our friends and our community.
There are 3 simple ways to donate:
Learn more about how you can make a difference and ensure that everyone can belong and thrive in Waterloo Region! Receive inspirational stories about how you are making a difference right to your inbox.
