Turning ideas into impact: Students tackle youth homelessness in interfaculty Innovation Sprint
Participants from the Innovation Sprint on Preventing Youth Homelessness celebrate after 48 hours of intense collaboration. Photo: Norane Hassan
From November 21 to 23, 160 uOttawa students spent over 48 hours working in interdisciplinary teams, alongside community partners, in an intensive, fast-paced and credited educational experience finding solutions to one of the city’s biggest social challenges, youth homelessness.
The Innovation Sprint on Preventing Youth Homelessness was organized and hosted by the Telfer School of Management, the Faculty of Medicine and the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa. Telfer offered the sprint, a first-of-its-kind event, to all faculties, with students from Arts, Engineering, Science, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Education also taking part.
Collaborating across disciplines
Students worked in interdisciplinary and interfaculty teams, with additional support from housing advocates, health workers, people with lived experience and frontline organizations. On hand as mentors were representatives from organizations including Operation Come Home, the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Ottawa Basketball Network and the Mashkawazìwagamig Indigenous Resource Centre.
Throughout the weekend, the energy of participants and partners created an environment for youth to imagine a different future for other youth. Solutions were hopeful, conversations courageous and the goal simple: preventing youth homelessness before it starts.
Participants worked with community partners to design solutions based on real-world conditions. Photo: Norane Hassan
“This was a great opportunity to work with the next generation of leaders to find solutions to address the crisis of youth homelessness in our community,” said Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa.
“Connecting community leaders and agencies with a diverse group of students from multiple disciplines is important to bringing new perspectives to these complex challenges, and also to help students develop a stronger understanding of the systems that shape our communities.”
Vulnerable young people’s reality
Every year, hundreds of young people find themselves without homes due to income insecurity, shortages of affordable housing and gaps in co-ordinated support. On any given night, at least 100 Ottawa youth sleep in shelters, church basements or on the street.
Kaite Burkholder Harris (left) guides the opening discussion on the causes of youth homelessness with community partners and uOttawa criminologist Kanatase Horn (second from left). Photo: Norane Hassan
As Indigenous scholar Jesse Thistle has written — and as professor Kanatase Horn reminded students during the sprint — homelessness is not only the absence of housing, but the loss of culture, family, community and belonging.
Too often, though, conversations about homelessness begin with the shelter system. Yet shelters are a system of last resort, not one designed for prevention.
Where can prevention begin?
Speakers from Ottawa’s service agencies and uOttawa faculty opened the weekend by describing the root causes of youth homelessness and the broader system-level barriers that hinder young people’s pathways to housing stability. Students met their team members, listened, asked questions, challenged assumptions and embraced a co-creation with community mindset.
From there, ideas moved forward quickly. The sprint challenged students to work across disciplines to design interventions across eight sub-themes, supports that could reduce the likelihood of youth entering homelessness long before a crisis hits.
Interdisciplinary teams worked intensely over 48 hours. Photo: Norane Hassan
Teams leaned heavily on design thinking, a core element of Telfer Innovation Sprints, which teaches students how to approach complex community issues through collaboration and creativity. With input and guidance from their community mentors, teams brainstormed and refined ideas from multiple perspectives, keeping service users in mind. For many students, it was their first time applying such an approach.
Whiteboards were filled, erased and reimagined. New connections were made. Disciplinary experiences converged. Ideas were sharpened to ensure proposals stayed grounded in real-world conditions.
Interdisciplinary approach yields solutions
By Sunday afternoon, rough sketches had become polished presentations.
Teams presented solutions to a panel of judges that included Ottawa city councillors, uOttawa faculty and community leaders. University of Ottawa president Marie-Eve Sylvestre announced the highest-ranked teams by theme, each of which received $500 to be donated to community organizations of its choice.
Judges were impressed with both the solutions and the presenters, noting the slim margins of victory in each case.
“The sprint shows the innovation that’s possible when students work across disciplines and alongside community partners,” said Claire Kendall, associate dean of social accountability in the Faculty of Medicine. “When we bring diverse expertise to the same table, we generate solutions with depth and creativity.”
Kendall added: “We’re grateful to the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa and all our community partners whose collaboration made this work possible.”
Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe discusses sprint innovation solutions with participants. Photo: Norane Hassan
Mayor Sutcliffe was also on-hand to present the Public Choice Award for the top solution overall. It went to the Wave Consulting team for an in-school nutrition program to reduce student stress levels, to boost attendance and improve long-term resilience. The award came with $3,000, also to be donated to an organization of the team’s choosing.
Sutcliffe also applauded uOttawa for focusing its efforts and resources on pressing local issues and said he looked forward to future collaborations.
“When we bring diverse expertise to the same table, we generate solutions with depth and creativity.”
Dr. Claire Kendall — Associate Dean, Social Accountability, Faculty of Medicine
Collaborative learning applauded
For students, the sprint felt like learning “rewired” — collaborative, intensive, sometimes uncomfortable, and grounded in lived experience rather than hypothetical cases.
Winning team member Jasmine Vardy says the interdisciplinary approach and input from mentors made for a valuable learning experience she hopes Telfer will offer again.
Vardy said: “I looked at our solution through a budget lens. The medical, neuroscience and biomedical students saw it through a health lens. I was glad to be paired with students from other faculties. I learned a lot from them.”
The Hallways to Home team took top marks in the School-based prevention sub-theme. Photo: Norane Hassan
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with the mentors,” she added. “They helped us narrow down our ideas, which was great, because we had a lot. And I’ve made connections that will continue even after the sprint.”
Strengthening connection between campus and community
For community partners, the sprint opened new avenues for exchange of ideas and expertise, for energy and network-building.
“Our community benefits by expanding our change agents and creating new, bilateral relationships to address societal issues,” Kendall said. “We are sensitizing our students to community challenges and facilitating their contributions to help solve these issues.”
Sutcliffe applauded the students’ creativity and encouraged them to consider a continued focus on solving local issues after their studies.
“Municipal government has an immediate and direct impact on the people in your community,” he said. “We need young and smart people like you to help us tackle the challenges we face.”
Telfer Dean Stéphane Brutus listens to a pitch. Photo: Norane Hassan
Sylvestre, whose own research explores how criminalization increases harm for homeless youth, said the sprint was proof of what can happen when a university’s learning and its community are connected.
“It was phenomenal to see the care and compassion our students put into their solutions and presentations,” she said. “This sprint clearly demonstrated uOttawa’s ability to propose concrete solutions to social challenges. Together with our community partners, we are allocating our money, energy and efforts where they can have the biggest impact.”
“Together with our community partners, we are allocating our money, energy and efforts where they can have the biggest impact.”
Marie-Eve Sylvestre — President and Vice-Chancellor
“Telfer’s focus on social challenges rather than traditional business problems aligns with the University’s role in the city,” said Stéphane Brutus, dean of the Telfer School of Management. “Having students from multiple faculties work with community members on community issues is the most effective way for uOttawa and its students to apply their intellectual resources.”
The weekend ended, but momentum continues. Several teams plan to continue refining their ideas with partners through uOttawa self-directed courses.
The Innovation Sprint on Preventing Youth Homelessness showed that uOttawa is where change begins — through true partnership between campus and community.
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