Co-creating an international vision for lived experience and peer leadership

Bringing peer leaders together on a global stage

In June 2024, Habitus Collective was invited to design and co-facilitate the ‘Lived Experience and Peer Leadership Match’ at the Global Leadership Exchange in Heiloo, Netherlands. Matches are intensive themed sessions where international leaders come together to share innovations, challenges, and learn from one another. This was a partnership with EUCOMS (the European network of community mental health service providers), with additional support from HSE Ireland and SAMHSA.

The Match brought together 30 peer leaders from 12 countries, representing an extraordinary diversity of experience, geography, and culture. Participants came from across sectors including mental health, substance use, Disability, and harm reduction, representing both established leaders and emerging voices in lived experience leadership and peer leadership work.

Countries represented included Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, the United States, and Wales.

Challenges

Lived experience and peer leadership has grown across the globe, yet the expansion has been uneven. Some countries have established pathways for peers and lived experience practitioners to become supervisors, managers, and directors, while others are still developing foundational peer support and lived experience roles. This diversity of context presented both an opportunity and a challenge.

We needed to create a facilitation approach that could:

• Honour the diverse experiences and contexts represented in the room

• Draw on collective wisdom without defaulting to Western or bio-medical paradigms

• Move beyond lived experience and peer leadership as simply a hierarchical role or position

• Produce tangible outputs that participants could take back to their organisations and communities

• Create something of lasting international value that others could reference and build upon

What we did

We designed and co-facilitated an intensive two-day programme grounded in the principles we sought to explore. Rather than imposing a predetermined framework, we created conditions for authentic dialogue and co-production.

Our approach centred on three unifying concepts that emerged as themes to ground our work together:

Servant leadership: recognising that our work is only relevant if it serves those who use services to improve their circumstances and outcomes

Convening: positioning leadership as the practice of bringing people together rather than sitting atop a hierarchical pyramid

Network weaving: building connections that enable communities of leadership to grow and sustain change

Throughout the two days, we facilitated sessions that explored three core questions:

• What are the international principles, practices, and values of lived experience and peer leadership?

• How can lived experience and peer leadership be integrated into different parts of systems, structures, and communities?

• What conditions need to exist for lived experience and peer leadership to thrive?

We used participatory methods that enabled every voice to contribute, acknowledging that we did not represent all voices of lived experience but seeking to honour the leadership of past generations that created the foundation on which current efforts stand.

How we made a difference

By creating space for genuine co-production rather than consultation, participants were able to move beyond surface-level agreement to develop shared understanding across vastly different contexts. Our facilitation approach modelled the very principles being discussed.

Importantly, we supported a critical shift in how lived experience and peer leadership is understood. The conversations brought clarity that it should be seen as a collective leadership model, where the 'I' in leadership is limited and building communities of leadership together is prioritised. This represented a significant reframing from lived experience and peer leadership as simply a role in a hierarchical structure to a way of being and working that can exist at all levels.

Despite the diversity of experiences, geographies, and cultures represented, there was remarkable consensus. Participants consistently reflected on how their narratives mirrored each other, finding common ground across contexts that might otherwise have seemed incomparable.

Results

The Match produced two landmark outputs that continue to shape international dialogue on lived experience and peer leadership:

The Heiloo Declaration on Lived Experience and Peer Leadership: a commitment statement drafted and accepted by participants from 12 nations, describing and promoting lived experience and peer leadership as a global imperative. The Declaration articulates that lived and living experience leadership must be supported and visible throughout all levels, from individuals leading their own recovery journeys to senior leadership positions.

"Shared Power, Shared Recovery: The Promise of Lived-Experience-Peer Leadership": an international thought paper that pulls together collective answers to the questions explored at the Match. This paper sets out the vision, principles, and practices of lived experience and peer leadership across communities, services, and systems worldwide, creating an anchor and common understanding that others globally can reference for their work.

These outputs were designed as living documents that will continue to develop and evolve. Participants left with something tangible to take back to their organisations, communities, and teams, enabling them to continue conversations locally while referencing work created internationally.

The work continues through the International Peer Leadership Network’s Community of Practice and Peer Leadership Incubator, with plans for a follow-up Match at the 2026 Global Leadership Exchange in Canada to build on the Heiloo Declaration and develop a global Roadmap for Lived Experience and Peer Leadership.

You can learn more about our ongoing lived experience and peer leadership work at the International Peer Leadership Network.

Habitus has extensive international experience in peer support, lived experience and peer leadership development, and facilitating participatory processes that centre lived experience. For more information on how Habitus can support your organisation or network to develop lived experience and peer leadership, contact us.