About Us

Welcome to Insight 2 Impact, an educational initiative designed to support ethical, meaningful, and sustainable engagement of people with lived experience in systems change work. This toolkit is grounded in the work of the Expert Steering Team (EST) of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa (ATEHO). Founded in 2021, the EST is a staff team of housing and homelessness professionals with lived experience of homelessness. Together, they have partnered with organizations, researchers, and government bodies to shape policies, programs, and practices, shifting the Ottawa service landscape for the better.

The goal of Insight 2 Impact is to guide organizations, governments, and individuals from curiosity to understanding to championing lived experience engagement. Whether you are establishing a new team, revising existing practices, or seeking to deepen existing partnerships, this I2I offers practical guidance, ethical frameworks, and concrete tools to help you succeed while centring equity, human rights, and anti-oppressive practices.

This work reflects our values of:

Ethical engagement – prioritizing the safety, agency, and consent of all participants.
Equity and inclusion – ensuring diversity of experience, identity, and perspective.
Transparency and accountability – embedding clear expectations and feedback mechanisms.
Trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practices – creating spaces where everyone can participate without tokenization, exploitation, or re-traumatization.

Check back here for toolkit resources - Winter 2025.

Click here for The Empathy Project

Contact us at [email protected]

Work with Us

We are passionate about collaborating with others to end homelessness.

Check out our services below, and reach out to learn more about how we can work together.

Contact us at [email protected]

Consultations

Do You Want Insight on Your Policies or Programs?

We work collaboratively with partners to ensure their policies and programs are benefiting people experiencing homelessness and poverty. Reach out and let us know what you are looking for help with and we will make a plan with you to do one-time or ongoing consultations. We can offer help with program development (new or existing), policy development, and we can give insight on how you can meaningfully engage with your clients.

To inquire about consultations, contact [email protected]

Testimonials From Our Partners:

"Working with the Expert Steering Team was tremendous. After working with them earlier this year, I plan to seek their input on all our projects. They provided advice and insight that could not have been gained elsewhere, helping us refine our plans and avoid potential roadblocks."

- Operation Come Home

“The Expert Steering Team was a key contributor to the Ottawa Food Bank’s community co-design process. The Team’s contributions were thoughtful and insightful and laid a solid foundation for our network development plan. The Expert Steering Team model provided an avenue for us to engage people with lived experience in a way that honours the invaluable expertise its members bring to the table, with the added advantage of simplifying the engagement process on our end. We look forward to working with them again as we move into the next phase of this process.”

- The Ottawa Food Bank

Facilitating Focus Groups

Are You Looking to Gather Feedback and Learn from Your Clients?

We want to help you find a way to get feedback and learn from your clients in a way that is meaningful for them and helpful for you. We are trained to facilitate engagement groups so you can get real feedback that can help inform your program or agencies next steps.

To inquire about focus group facilitation contact [email protected]

Testimonials From Our Partners:

"We worked with members of the EST to plan and facilitate lived-experience engagement sessions and they were exceptional. They worked to plan sessions that were interesting and engaging while making sure they also met our objectives. Their facilitation style was friendly, knowledgeable, and professional and I look forward to working with the EST again for future opportunities!"

- Options Bytown

Collaborating with Committees

Are You Looking for More Diverse Expertise in Your Group or Committee?

Having people with lived experience on your committees and working groups is considered best practice and a way to create more effective programs, policies and events. Our team is willing to sit on groups/committees throughout the sector to help share our skills and expertise.

To inquire further, contact [email protected]

Testimonials From Our Partners:

"Having two people with lived experience involved on the planning committee for the Ottawa Food Security Conference was tremendously valuable on many levels. It gave us new insights that allowed us to make more informed decisions that were based on collective knowledge instead of on assumptions. Including folks with lived experience has also been useful because it helped us build a culture of thinking and being open to thinking beyond our individual experiences."

- Ottawa Food Security Conference Planning Committee, Ottawa Food Bank

Research

Are You Doing Research on Homelessness or Poverty?

We believe that research can be an effective a tool for systems change. We work with researchers to develop ethical methods and design that are safe and that will benefit the people impacted by the research.

Our team has experience in:

developing research methods
creating surveys and questionnaires
facilitating focus groups
conducting interviews
analyzing data
journal and report writing

To inquire about partnering on research, contact [email protected]

Testimonials From Our Partners:

"We collaborated with the EST to help design our survey, interview, and focus group questions to ensure that we were as inclusive as possible and not using any stigmatizing language or methods. The EST provided feedback on our outreach strategy and the process for us to provide honorariums to participants. Collaborating with the EST in our research design helped us mitigate harms that we may have inadvertently caused when researching a marginalized and highly stigmatized population.

In addition to project design, members of the EST were also involved in our data dissemination activities: they helped us write and design public reports, and they are co-authoring journal publications with our team. The ongoing feedback we receive from the EST helps us include principles of trauma-informed research at all steps of the research process."

- Diana McGlinchey, Algonquin College

Presentations

Are You Looking for Someone to Speak About Homelessness?

We believe in educating people about homelessness so they can better understand the it's causes and impacts, and how we can end homelessness. We've spoken with high school classes, University classes and others, and would be happy to hear from you if you are looking for someone to come speak with your group.

To inquire further, contact [email protected]

Testimonials From Our Partners:

“We are immensely thankful to have folks from the Expert Steering Team come to our sociology class at Carleton University. The experience of meeting and directly hearing from folks with lived experience was thoroughly eye-opening for students and enhanced their learning gravely. The presenters’ engaged and well-organized talk allowed us to discuss housing precarity not as an abstract issue, but a lived reality while reviving the hope that things can be changed.”

- Azar Masoumi, Carleton University

The Empathy Project

The Empathy Project is an experiential learning exercise, designed and led by people with lived experience of homelessness and their supporters.

Our Values

Equity

Equity

We believe that to end homelessness, people with lived/living experience of homelessness, including First Nation, Métis and Inuit people, Black people, people of colour, disabled people, 2SLGBTQ+ people, refugees and newcomers, must be engaged meaningfully. This means equal opportunity for participation, decision making, and leadership, as well as gender inclusion at all levels. People must be respected, listened to, and paid for their expertise.

Collaboration

Collaboration

We are committed to applying our expertise and lived experiences in meaningful ways when working with partners so that the voices of people currently experiencing homelessness are prioritized in the sector.

System-Level Impact

System-Level Impact

We take a holistic approach in addressing homelessness, which focuses on system coordination, identifying barriers and gaps, and prevention. We work to create more equitable, impactful, and inclusive solutions, where all people are treated with dignity and respect.

Connect with us

Make a donation

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Address: PO Box 22021, Ottawa, ON K1V 0W2