Creating Cultures of Resiliency through Collaborative Research: The Youth Environmental, Empowerment, and Leadership Program

Background and Purpose:

Younger populations hold a formative place in the built environment, where they not only shape the current norms for a community, but also establish future goals and direction. Yet many youths struggle with finding their voice and lack the self-efficacy to drive necessary change. Communities and their residents have a growing and global awareness of the impact climate change is having on the world, whether it is through scarcity of water, food, or other resources. This project employs a cross-disciplinary approach to gain a better understanding of the person-in-environment that shape the complex ecosystem in developing tropical landscapes, which in turn directly impact hundreds of millions of residents and the highest concentration of biodiversity on Earth. Community awareness is heavily influenced by the media and the constant reminders of negative outcomes. Extreme weather conditions leading to natural and technological disasters, are visible and worrisome reminders of the unknown and pending climate change. There is an urgent need to build on existing community resilience to encourage positive decision making for climate change mitigation efforts, disaster preparedness, and improved mental health and resilience.

Methods:

Through a mixed methods design that features a strong component of community engagement, the research plan will assess decision-making regarding climate change mitigation efforts and positive mental health such as resilience. This multidisciplinary study has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of how patterns of risk and resilience are experienced by students and families, and the role that youth do or could play in fostering community resilience.

Results:

Results will be presented on the original Youth Leadership Program (N=133) implemented following Hurricane Katrina. Where findings on youth ages 14-18 revealed that students who participated, compared with peers who did not participate, scored significantly higher on self-efficacy. In addition, an interaction effect revealed that gains in self-efficacy also resulted in reduced trauma symptoms for both groups of students. The Youth Informed Model of Community Resiliency research plan will also be presented, along with the initial steps of education and observation currently in progress.

Conclusions and Implications:

Synthesis from the above process, data, and findings from the research will be synthesized to develop yields a youth informed model of community resilience based on positive mental health, strategic decision making, and collaboration. This research is unique in the studies of resilience as it will engage multiple levels of data collection and analysis in the same project, broadening our understanding of inter-related systems. In addition, the project will implement an evidence-based research program that crosses disciplinary silos. Our legacy, then, will be a study, a methodology, and new theory that raises the bar for resilience researchers that have hypothesized systemic interactions. The expectation is that the research will further a systemic understanding of the interconnections between the complex processes related to resilience and how industry, disasters and climate change affect the multiple social and physical determinants of youth health and resilience.