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Initiative

Opioid Social Lab

A Northern and Indigenous-led social lab process addressing the toxic opioid crisis through a safe, inclusive, and human-centred approach grounded in ceremony, lived experience, and actionable experimentation.

Impact Verticals Relational Infrastructure Knowledge Commons
Status
Completed
Timeline
2023
Lead Partner
Inspire IRP Consulting
Part Of
Lighting Up the North

The Challenge

Traditional Responses Fall Short

The escalating drug crisis has continued to claim lives, with deep layers of trauma and grief. Traditional top-down responses often fail to reach the lived realities of those most affected, and can reproduce harm through stigma, exclusion, and extractive engagement.

The Response

A Social Innovation Lab Model

This initiative applied a social innovation lab model to convene diverse participants in a setting designed for safety, inclusivity, and honest sharing. The approach centred local insight and Indigenous leadership, intentionally shifting away from externally imposed solutions.

Core design features included:

  • Human-centred facilitation that values lived experience as expertise
  • Iterative sessions that narrowed broad ideas into targeted, actionable strategies
  • Cultural grounding and care, including ceremony and an emphasis on spirit, relationships, and community strengths

What Was Delivered

Outputs

  • A set of social lab sessions focused on the opioid crisis and community-led response pathways
  • Emergent ideas and strategies shaped by participants closest to the impacts
  • Learnings on how to replicate and adapt the model across other Northern and Indigenous communities

What We're Learning

Emerging Insights

  • The quality of the container matters: safety, care, and inclusion unlock truth-telling and better solutions
  • Community ownership of the process supports dignity and legitimacy
  • Iterative narrowing creates a bridge from complexity to action without pretending the problem is simple

Our Role

Design and Learning Capture

Sustainable Impact Foundation supported the design and learning capture for the social lab, helping translate insights into pathways that can inform broader systems change work while remaining grounded in community realities.

Related Focus Areas

Connected themes

03

Relational Infrastructure

Community participation, voice, and legitimacy.

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06

Impact Verticals

Applied system change in health and wellness.

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Interested in this work?

If you are working in social labs, harm reduction, or Indigenous-led community processes, we welcome conversations about shared learning.

Get in Touch