Creating Authentic, Effective Partnerships between Organizations & People with Lived Experiences - A TOOLKIT

When you have lived through something, you have the deepest and closest understanding of the day-to-day experiences, “[and can] help researchers and policymakers understand the complex intersectional dimensions” of the issue being discussed.6 Including those with lived experiences help researchers and program leaders ensure that they respond to the needs of the community and develop policies and p. [...] Given the scope and topic of the study, its success depended on our ability to partner closely and frequently with both leaders in the field and people with lived or living experiences of homelessness. [...] That said, once we began meeting as a board, the input from the LEAB enriched the CASPEH, making it more accessible and better able to reflect the truth on the ground Bureaucratic, staffing, and timeline hurdles may be familiar to you and your organization. [...] Aware that the experience of homelessness is unique for every person, we strove to build a board of advisors with varying experiences of homelessness who belonged to a diverse set of communities: from rural and urban communities, with experiences living sheltered and unsheltered, both young and old, in families and single. [...] As board members and BHHI researchers, we ask you to recognize the emotional and psychological labor it takes to be on a lived expertise advisory board by paying board members for the additional work that they do before and after meetings as well as for any consulting or presenting that you ask them to do beyond the board meetings.