Orange Shirt Day at UBC – September 30

You are invited to participate in an Orange Shirt Day on September 30, a day when we wear orange shirts to honour residential school survivors.

Join a morning webinar with speaker and author Phyllis Webstad on September 22nd. Phyllis’ story - having her new orange shirt taken away on her first day of residential school - continues to inspire this collective remembering. Shirts and other items are available to order online, with proceeds supporting the Orange Shirt Society. Giving back - one of UBC’s Thrive 5 - is good for your own wellbeing. It is also timely with the celebration of UBCs Indigenous Strategic Plan on Monday, September 14th. Send us a photo of yourself wearing your orange shirt and get featured in our next newsletter.

Health, Wellbeing and Benefits team is focused on supporting the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of staff and faculty at both individual and community levels. We believe that wellbeing requires safe, healthy, and supportive environments, including equity and human rights. One of the ways we can work towards these supportive environments is to learn more about residential schools and their intergenerational impacts. There are many resources available online through UBC’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre. When you learn about the past in a reflexive way, you will feel more comfortable exploring your actions, roles and responsibilities, and connectedness to others.

The impacts of residential schools can be emotionally triggering and there are a number of UBC and community resources available to you:

• Employee and Family Assistance Program, 1-800-387-4765 (free and confidential, 24/7).
• Indigenous Mental Health Counselling and Crisis Intervention, 1-855-242-3310. 
• Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line to support residential school survivors and their families, 1-866-925-4419.
• Métis Crisis Line, 1-833-MÉTISBC.
• Crisis Centre BC: 1-800-784-2433
• Vancouver’s Access and Assessment Centre, 604-675-3700 (7:30am – 11pm).
• Mental Health and Substance Use Services, Interior Health: 250-868-7788 (11:30-9pm) or Kelowna General Hospital 250-862-4000.

Healthy UBC will be featuring future health and wellbeing programs and initiatives that center IBPOC perspectives in our work. If you are an IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, Person of Colour) faculty or staff member and would like to share your knowledge and perspectives on wellbeing, please reach out to me.

Alicia Hibbert

Senior Lead, Workplace Wellbeing Strategies

​I have a prairie Metis perspective and I’m a guest living, working, and resting with gratitude on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxʷ (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh), and skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w (Squamish) peoples.