Joey is a Case Manager at UGM, and he’s exactly the kind of person you’d want on your side in a hard season. He listens intently and doesn’t rush. He offers a blend of compassion and caring support. And he shows up every day ready to walk alongside people as they work on their personal goals.
Joey brings a pastor’s heart to his work at UGM — in no small part because he was, for many years, a pastor. He and his wife moved to Canada from the Philippines in 2002, serving for two years in Saskatchewan before joining a church-planting initiative in Vancouver. It was when he noticed that many of his congregants were struggling with addiction that Joey felt God prompting him towards something new.
“I grew up in a slum area, and in my teens and early 20s I also lived in addiction,” he shares. “So I had a desire to minister to people like me.” Praying that the Lord would use his past to bless others, he enrolled in an addiction worker certificate at Vancouver College. As part of his studies, he completed an internship at UGM. “I sensed God calling me into a different role. And so after my internship ended, I applied to work at UGM.”
Now in his eighth year at UGM, Joey started in a support role on the reception desk at UGM’s East Hastings location, and then became an Outreach Worker. He quickly learned the needs of the community, and his role as Case Manager sees him supporting community members with everything from replacing lost IDs and filing their taxes to applying for housing. “Case Management is different in how deep you can be with your clients,” he says. “You work with them on their goals for months, sometimes years, so it builds a strong bond. It’s a collaboration: sometimes, you're a coach, sometimes you're a friend, sometimes you’re an instructor, sometimes you're a teacher. It’s a relationship built on trust.”
He sees his work as a continuation of the story God’s been telling through him over his years of pastoring. “As pastors, we were trained to write down our vision statements,” he recalls. “My vision statement was: ‘to see people who are in addiction get released and experience God's healing.’ And then when I came to UGM, I finally realized this was the vision that God had been giving me. I find purpose and meaning here.”
