Community of Practice
A place to work through the questions together
Coordinating lived experience engagement can mean navigating complex questions without many people to turn to. How do we prevent tokenism? Support a team through conflict? Balance organizational expectations with meaningful influence? Build practices that are ethical and sustainable?
The i2i Community of Practice brings together people across Canada who coordinate, facilitate, manage, or support lived experience engagement in housing, homelessness, and related sectors.
A community of practice is a group of people who learn together through their shared work. Ours creates an ongoing space to exchange approaches, discuss challenges, and strengthen how lived experience engagement happens in practice.
Who it’s for
If you support a lived experience team or are working toward creating one this space is for you.
We welcome people working in community services, peer-led initiatives, advocacy, government, research, and related settings. This includes coordinators, facilitators, managers, researchers, and people with lived expertise leading or supporting engagement work.
You don’t need an established team or a finished model to participate. Questions and work in progress are welcome.
What we’re building together
Shared learning
Learn from approaches developed in different communities and share what you’re discovering in your own work. Together, we explore practical questions, exchange resources, and build skills informed by experience.
Support in your role
Connect with others who understand the responsibilities and tensions involved in this work. Bring a challenge, explore possible approaches, or offer insight that helps someone else move forward.
Stronger shared practice
Help develop shared language and expectations for ethical, equitable, and accountable engagement. This is collaborative work, shaped by participants and grounded in lived expertise, with room for different community contexts.
What we explore
Our early priorities reflect questions raised by practitioners across Canada, including:
- Preventing tokenism and extractive engagement.
- Recruitment, onboarding, and retention.
- Fair compensation and sustainable resourcing.
- Role clarity, boundaries, and organizational expectations.
- Staff well-being, psychological safety, and community care.
- Facilitation, conflict, and navigating power.
- Supporting lived experience leadership in policy and systems change.
These topics provide a starting point. Participants help shape the questions and priorities we explore together.
How it works
Launched in October 2026 as a one-year pilot, the Community of Practice meets monthly online through Zoom.
Sessions create space to share experiences, identify common challenges, and explore practical responses. The group’s direction develops through ongoing conversation about what participants need and what would be most useful to their work.
Participation is flexible and low pressure. You’re welcome to contribute questions and experiences, share approaches, or listen and reflect.
From the toolkit to everyday practice
The i2i Meaningful Engagement Toolkit offers a foundation for ethical engagement. The Community of Practice creates space to explore what applying that guidance looks like in different organizations and communities.
Together, these resources support an ongoing process of learning, trying, reflecting, and improving.
Join the conversation
Interested in taking part? Register your interest to receive meeting invitations and information about upcoming sessions.
If you have questions about whether the group fits your role or organization, contact us at i2i@endhomelessnessottawa.ca.