Funding for Hope...

The Hope Learning Centre is pretty unique, we're a free educational program that helps individuals learn more about Mental Health. You can almost think of us as a Community College for Mental Health and Well-being.

Our program mandate is pretty simple, we are an upstream prevention tool for everyday people to become more adept at managing their own mental health. The Hope Learning Centre and its courses are designed to offer real-world solutions to everyday stress, we talk about coping with tough life events, we provide an option to learn more about different mental health diagnoses and how to support both yourself or someone you know, and we have classes that focus on life skills like finance, relationships, and boundaries. All of our courses are created with the input of people with lived experience, professionals in the mental health space, and everyday people. We do this so the information you get as a student feels relevant, practical, and applicable to a wide range of situations.

We operate on 3 month semesters, during which time we have a variety of courses you can register for and take. We've done our best to make sure our courses are as accessible as possible. Most courses are in the evenings, and all of our courses are offered virtually and In-Person. Our physical classroom is located in Regina, Saskatchewan, so we operate on Saskatchewan time. However, anyone is welcome to sign up for our classes! And, if you aren't able to sign up for a class, they repeat each semester (for the most part) so everyone has the opportunity to register and learn. You can find our site at: www.SkHopeLearningCentre.ca

We have been in operation for 2 years now, opening our doors in March of 2020, it was a rough year... for everyone. We've come a long way from then and are very proud of the adaptations we've taken on to operate very effectively in the virtual space. We are excited about our ability to offer courses virtually as it allows us to better serve communities where mental health resources may be limited or where mobility or transportation may be an issue.

We have plans to expand our course list in the Fall of 2022, we should have around 18 free mental health courses you can enroll in, currently, we have 10 courses running regularly. We also offer a weekly Podcast series called Lunch Bytes that discusses different mental health topics each week. We also have certified trainers for Mental Health First Aid, ASIST, Safe Talk, Small Talk, and Looking Forward. As well as 2 internally developed certification courses called Difficult Discussions and Phycological Health and Safety Training which are both directed at workplace mental health.

This has been a hard year for funding, we are a program of the Canadian Mental Health Association Saskatchewan Division, which is a non-profit, non-government charity. We are currently operating entirely on donations with no support from the federal or provincial government. As all of our programming is free, and funding has been so limited, this is putting a strain on our long-term operational outlook. So, we're looking into Go Fund Me to help with our costs.

The Canadian Mental Health Association, Saskatchewan Division, CMHA SK, is one of the oldest and largest community-based human services organizations in Saskatchewan. We are proud to be part of CMHA National, connecting us with branches all across Canada.