About i2i
i2i (Insight to Impact) brings together the education, training, and consulting work of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa’s Expert Steering Team (EST).
Founded in 2021, the EST is a staff team of housing and homelessness professionals with lived experience of homelessness. We bring diverse skills, perspectives, and professional backgrounds to a shared purpose: improving the systems that shape people’s lives.
Through i2i, we share what we’ve learned with organizations, governments, researchers, educators, and people with lived experience working for change in their own communities.
Your next steps, built together
You don’t need to have a project plan ready before reaching out. Whether you’re developing a project, fleshing out a research proposal, building a lived experience team, or rethinking how your organization engages people, we can help you explore the next steps towards ethical, high-impact practice.
Bring your questions, your challenges, and your community’s context. We’ll bring practical insights grounded in lived expertise and years of working together.
About the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa
The Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa brings people and organizations together to advance solutions to homelessness and advocate for housing as a human right.
The EST is part of the Alliance’s staff team, bringing lived expertise into its work and community partnerships. i2i builds on this foundation, sharing approaches to education, engagement, and systems change with communities beyond Ottawa.
Our Work
The Empathy Project
Facilitate a deeper understanding of homelessness in your community. The Empathy Project is a simulation-based learning exercise that invites participants to explore how policies, services, and everyday interactions shape people’s housing journeys. The Empathy Project opens up conversations about stigma, systemic barriers, and opportunities for change.
Toolkit on the Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience of Homelessness
Meaningful lived experience engagement takes care, planning, and practical support. Our toolkit draws on the EST’s experience to help organizations build equitable approaches to recruitment, compensation, team development, and shared decision-making. Use it to start conversations, examine existing practices, and identify your next steps.
Community of Practice for Engagement Workers
Our work is stronger when we can learn together. Our Community of Practice creates space to exchange ideas, explore challenges, and share approaches to lived experience engagement. Connect with others in similar roles and contribute your own questions, experience, and insight to an ongoing conversation.
Consultation and Collaboration
Bring lived expertise into your work from the beginning. The EST contributes to research, policy development, program design, working groups, and planning tables. Whether you need a focused consultation or an ongoing collaborator, we bring diverse perspectives and practical recommendations grounded in knowledge of housing and homelessness systems.
Training and Workshops
Build understanding and give your team space to ask questions. Our training and workshops explore homelessness, lived experience engagement, and the practices that support meaningful inclusion. We bring lived expertise and professional knowledge into conversations that help participants connect what they’ve learned to their own work.
Funding Partners
