The Importance Highlighting Lived Expertise

People with lived expertise offer a valuable partnership across systems change work. They offer insight into how the system directly impacts the community it was designed to serve. The participation of people with lived experience offers a cohort the chance to design equitable solutions by offering those directly impacted a seat at the table.

A person with lived experience is someone who has lived (or is currently living) with an issue caused by inequity. The presence of people with lived expertise transforms a cohort by moving broader participants away from looking at a community through the lens of scarcity and need, and to instead see them as real people with a voice and experience that can draw a more complete picture of the system a cohort is trying to improve to become more responsive. 

According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, directly consulting with people who have the lived experience of homelessness is vital to ending chronic homelessness. 

As RE!NSTITUTE moves into the launch of the CA Encampment Cohort next month, CEO Sean Whitten is committed to elevating the voices of people with lived experience in having equitable access to a seat at the table they will be discussed at. 

This year on Giving Tuesday, we’re rallying to raise $4,000 to pay for the expertise of those with lived experience on our 100-Day Challenge teams. Their knowledge and experience is a critical component to coming up with solutions in their communities, and like others on their team they should be paid for their time, expertise, and knowledge. We’ll use the dollars that we raise to pay for the expertise of four team members on the upcoming California Encampment 100-Day Challenge Cohort. 

For Echo Collins-Egan, RRI’s Chief Impact Officer, the voice of those with lived experience is critical to real systemic change.

“Our work is about placing the people in need at the center of the institutions designed to help them. A person who needs housing will be at the heart of re-thinking how the housing and homelessness system works…or a woman suffering violence, at the center of how the criminal justice system supports her. One way we can center these voices is by inviting people with lived experience to be a part of the chorus of voices that inform deep systems change work.” - Echo Collins-Egan 

Your support can help us transform systems with people power driving how change happens. This Giving Tuesday we're inviting you to be a part of this change by going to our website and donating, to pay those who have experienced homelessness for their expertise and honor their effort which is so essential to building the systems that truly work for those they serve.