The Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, in collaboration with its Expert Steering Team (EST), has launched Insight to Impact, a new toolkit designed to support the meaningful and ethical engagement of people with lived experience of homelessness. Drawing on firsthand experiences and lessons learned from across Canada, the toolkit offers practical guidance for organizations looking to move beyond simply inviting people to the table and toward ensuring their expertise is respected and their contribution leads to meaningful change.
Why Meaningful Engagement Needs More Than Good Intentions
“Ethical engagement is not just about who is involved but how the work is done.”
-Insight to Impact Toolkit
As more organizations recognize the importance of engaging people with lived experience of homelessness, the question of how becomes increasingly important. While there is growing recognition of the value of lived expertise, practical guidance on how to engage people ethically and meaningfully remains limited.
Through its work alongside the EST, the Alliance has seen firsthand both the opportunities and challenges that come with meaningful engagement. Even with the best intentions, organizations can unintentionally cause harm when they lack the knowledge, tools, or practices needed to support it. At the same time, the EST’s work in Ottawa demonstrates what’s possible when lived expertise is meaningfully included in decision making. Through ongoing advocacy and collaboration, the team has secured representation on key municipal advisory and leadership tables, helping shape the future of the city’s housing and homelessness response.
These experiences, alongside lessons learned from other lived experience teams across Canada, highlighted the need for a resource that moves beyond broad principles and offers practical guidance for other organizations, municipalities and institutions interested in this work. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to engaging people with lived expertise – for some, building a full-fledged team is the ideal, while for others, project-specific consultation may be a more immediate priority. Whatever stage of lived experience engagement an organization is at, Insight to Impact offers lessons, practices, and tools to help navigate this work more ethically and effectively.
Learning Through Experience: How We Got Here
“You’ll always be surprised by how well people can do when they’re given a chance or an opportunity. Not a chance you could lose at any time, but something that’s yours. They will surprise you every time.”
-Suzanne Gregoire, founding Expert Steering Team member
Established in 2021, the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa’s Expert Steering Team (EST) is made up of housing and homelessness professionals with lived experience of homelessness. Through their work influencing policy, research, and decision-making, the team has learned firsthand about both the opportunities and challenges of lived experience engagement.
Some of our most valuable lessons have come from listening when EST members propose changes to the Alliance’s own practices. For example, EST members were originally classified as independent contractors. After EST members raised concerns about this arrangement, the Alliance revisited its approach and reclassified EST roles into staff positions, ultimately creating a more equitable workplace and fairer recognition of the team’s work. This experience reinforced an important lesson: meaningful engagement requires organizations to be open to feedback, acknowledge when change is needed, and follow through with action.
Our learning hasn’t happened in isolation. The EST gathered insights from 11 other lived experience teams across Canada through environmental scans, interviews and surveys. While the structures and practices of these teams varied, common themes emerged around the importance of fair compensation, clear governance, and genuine influence in decision-making.
Together, these experiences and lessons helped shape Insight to Impact, turning years of learning into practical guidance that other organizations can draw from.
Beyond the Toolkit: Continuing the Conversation
“This toolkit is intended as a launch point for rich and ongoing local discussion, and is not intended as a replacement for community consultation and partnership.”
-Insight to Impact Toolkit
The launch of Insight to Impact is just one step in an ongoing commitment to strengthening meaningful engagement. The toolkit offers practical guidance on recruitment, onboarding, compensation, decision-making, and preventing tokenism, alongside downloadable resources and tools that organizations can adapt to their own needs.
But meaningful engagement doesn’t happen through resources alone. It requires ongoing relationships, shared learning, and a willingness to navigate challenges together.
That’s why the Alliance has also recently launched the Insight to Impact Community of Practice, bringing together people who support and facilitate lived experience engagement to share knowledge, reflect on challenges, and strengthen their approaches.
What might meaningful engagement look like in your organization?
As a starting point, explore the Insight to Impact toolkit and identify one practice you could strengthen.
For questions about the toolkit, opportunities for collaboration, or support with lived experience engagement, contact the Insight to Impact team directly at i2i@endhomelessnessottawa.ca
If you’re interested in connecting with others who coordinate, facilitate, manage, or support lived experience engagement in housing, homelessness, and related sectors, sign up here to join our virtual monthly Community of Practice – questions and works in progress are welcome!
Thank you for being here and learning with us. We’d love to hear from you.
