Are You Ready for a RARE Experience?

The RARE Experience is an immersive, lived-experience-informed System Simulation Training Series designed to move participants beyond learning about barriers to experiencing how systems, policies, processes, and decisions interact in real life.

Through time-sensitive scenarios, competing responsibilities, limited resources, and real-world decision points, participants experience the complexity of navigating systems from the perspective of the people most directly impacted by them.

"Understanding a system is different from experiencing what it takes to navigate one. "

How the RARE Experience Works

Participants enter the experience with an assigned identity, circumstances, responsibilities, and goals. They must navigate multiple systems and complete required tasks while managing limited time, resources, information, and unexpected barriers.

The experience is followed by a facilitated debrief that connects what happened during the simulation to real-world policies, practices, service delivery, and opportunities for systems improvement.

One Experience. Multiple Perspectives.

The RARE Experience is designed to show the full complexity of navigating systems—not simply the barriers within them. Throughout the simulation, participants encounter challenges, choices, resources, support, consequences, and opportunities that can change the direction of their experience.

No two journeys are exactly the same. Outcomes are shaped by the circumstances participants begin with, the decisions they make, the information and resources available to them, and the way systems and people respond along the way.

The experience creates space to examine what creates barriers, what improves outcomes, what works, and where opportunities for change exist.

WHO IS THE RARE EXPERIENCE FOR?

The RARE Experience is designed for individuals and organizations whose decisions, services, policies, or work intersect with the lives of system-impacted people.

That includes:

• Criminal legal and court professionals

• Government agencies and policymakers

• Community-based organizations and service providers

• Healthcare and behavioral health professionals

• Educators and training institutions

• Employers and workforce professionals

• Housing and homelessness response systems

• Financial institutions and community investors

• Faith and community leaders

• Students and emerging professionals

• Advocates and community members

• People with lived experience

WHAT PARTICIPANTS TAKE AWAY

The RARE Experience moves participants beyond awareness by creating a shared experience they can examine together. Through simulation and facilitated debrief, participants connect what they experienced to the policies, practices, decisions, and systems they encounter in their own work and communities.

Participants leave with:

• Greater understanding of interconnected systems — how requirements across housing, employment, courts, healthcare, family, transportation, benefits, and other systems can compound one another.

• A deeper understanding of lived experience — seeing circumstances from the perspective of the person navigating them rather than solely from the perspective of the system providing the service.

• Recognition of unintended barriers — identifying how seemingly reasonable policies, procedures, timelines, and requirements can create unexpected consequences when combined with other responsibilities.

• Understanding of what improves outcomes — recognizing the difference that timely information, effective communication, peer support, coordinated services, flexibility, and access to resources can make.

• Stronger cross-system perspective — understanding how one organization's decision or requirement may affect an individual's ability to successfully meet the expectations of another.

• Opportunities for reflection and action — identifying practices that are working, gaps that may need attention, and realistic opportunities to improve how systems and organizations respond.

From Experience to Action

The simulation is only part of the RARE Experience.

Facilitated debrief and reflection help participants examine what happened, why it happened, and how the experience connects to their own roles. The goal is not to tell participants what to think, but to create a shared foundation for better questions, stronger collaboration, and more informed approaches to systems change.

BRING THE RARE EXPERIENCE TO YOUR ORGANIZATION 

The RARE Experience can be brought into organizations, agencies, institutions, and communities seeking a deeper understanding of how people experience and navigate complex systems.

Experiences can be designed around specific audiences, learning goals, and system areas while maintaining the lived-experience foundation and immersive structure of the RARE Experience.

Whether you are looking to strengthen staff understanding, support professional development, examine cross-system barriers, engage community stakeholders, or create meaningful conversations around systems change, RARE can work with your organization to design an experience that meets your goals.