Our Social Innovation Lab Approach
For the last three years, Leadership Waterloo Region has partnered with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) at the University of Waterloo, and Wellbeing Waterloo Region (WWR) to raise the level of learning and broader community, and economic development impact of the group project work through a pilot solutions lab project focusing on affordable housing.
We owe a heartfelt thanks to our Class of 2022 Social Innovation Coach: Kirsten Wright - PhD student, University of Waterloo, WISIR.
Project Partners
Waterloo Institue for Social Innovation and Resilience
Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), is committed to generating trans- and inter-disciplinary knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process (the dynamics of learning, adaptation, and resilience).
Our approach is to pursue collaborative research and projects that bridge University of Waterloo departments, involve researchers from around the world, and engage those beyond academia.
WISIR seeks to mobilize this knowledge through a range of new curriculum offerings and training opportunities - both within and outside of a university setting.
Wellbeing Waterloo
Region
Wellbeing Waterloo Region is a diverse and connected network working together differently to make transformational change in wellbeing.
Community wellbeing is shaped by a wide variety of conditions and systems in which individuals and communities are born, grow, work, live, and age. Due to this complexity, there is the realization that no single organization, government, or program can tackle or solve the increasingly complex conditions or systems to impact community wellbeing. We must work together to create transformative change to truly improve community wellbeing to ensure that no one gets left behind.
Methodology
The Affordable Housing Lab was created to enable the Leadership Waterloo Region Core Program particpants to use their collective knoweldge and experience to tackle a complex issue facing Waterloo Region. The Lab is a collaborative effort between LWR the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience and Wellbeing Waterloo Region.
The problem we are trying to solve is systemic. The Profile of Wellbeing (2018) tells us that one in 8 households are living with low incomes and that one-quarter of households are spending 30% or more on housing. According to the Region of Waterloo, for a single person to get into a community housing unit, the wait is currently 7.9 years. Shelters are seeing increased numbers and stay duration, primarily due to the lack of access to affordable housing. The affordable housing crisis is real.
Through the labs' innovation methodology, we scrutinized housing solutions that affect social inclusion and vulnerable populations, finding a housing solution for those in greatest need, and improve sustainability of social housing and build capacity in the sector. We did not expect to find a silver bullet, but a silver-buckshot, a way to identify multiple opportunities to recommend systemic changes to some of the many systems that surround affordable housing.
Phase 1: Establish Scope and Reframe
• Systems design and mapping to inform prototyping in later phase/collect stakeholder inputs
• Contextualize program to participants for engagement
• Identify leverage, intervention, ideation
Phase 2 & 3: Development
• Learning objectives around business model canvas/lens thinking and output from Phase 1 will contextualize and inform process with stakeholders
• Prototype presentation to community of stakeholders
• Handoff of prototypes to partner and community stakeholders, as well as researchers
Phase 4: Implementation and Evaluation
• Prototype test/delivery, including developmental evaluation
• Revisitation of leverage points
• Participatory budgeting processes mobilized
Phase 5: Reporting and Roadmap
• Evaluation of impact
• Key learnings
• Proposal for ongoing Collective Impact framework
• Scaling and replication strategies (Scaling Out and Scaling Up)