Spaces and Places is a three-year, multi-site, visual methods study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Atlantic Aboriginal Health Research Program (AAHRP). The purpose of this project is to conceptualize what spaces are available to youth that establish a sense of community and cultural connection when facing heightened risks. It also seeks to understand how these spaces facilitate a sense of cultural and civic engagement in youth, in turn fostering resilience. The partners of this project have identified the need to better understand youth living in three remote communities of Labrador.

This international and interdisciplinary partnership, under the leadership of Claudia Mitchell (McGill University) and Relebohile Moletsane (University of KwaZulu-Natal), brings together government and community-based organizations focusing on girls and young women, 40 co-applicants and collaborators from 14 post-secondary institutions in Canada and South Africa and a network of stakeholder partners located in both countries. The partnership seeks to examine and learn from the contexts in which communities of girls and young women are subject to exceptionally high rates of sexual violence. In the Canadian context this grouping refers to self-identified young Indigenous girls/women, and in the South African context girls and young women who belong to two of the official government designated groups, Black and Coloured (mixed race), and who live in rural areas. Methodologically, the project draws on approaches to learning ‘from the ground up’ (digital story-telling, participatory video, cellphilms, drawing and mapping, etc.) and builds on various iterations of youth-led media making, community-based research, participatory action research, research as intervention and research as social change. It aims to shift the boundaries of knowledge production and policy change. It also studies knowledge exchange amongst institutions, community practitioners and policy-makers.

This research focuses on young people with complex needs. This is a longitudinal study using both qualitative and quantitative methods to follow youth as they move into adulthood. It explores the strategies they use and their strengths, abilities, plans, relationships and services to help them cope with hard times and to make successful transitions to adulthood. Its aim is to identify services and strategies that are successful in assisting young people to achieve positive outcomes in their lives. Approximately 1500 young people, aged from 12-17 years have participated in this study.

This project uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine service use patterns, personal and ecological risk factors, and aspects of resilience of youth across different cultures, contexts, and with complex service histories in at least five countries around the globe: Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Colombia, and China. The goal of the project is to understanding which patterns support best outcomes for young people and facilitate improved service structures (including policy and service delivery).

 

The Negotiating Resilience project uses an innovative combination of visual methods, observation, qualitative interviews and reciprocity between researchers and youth to deepen our understandings of resilience from children and youth’s own cultural and contextual viewpoints. The purpose of the project is to understand the interactive processes associated with positive development among children and youth who are in transition between two (and possibly more) culturally distinct worlds. The goals are to learn both what resilience means, as well as the pathways to resilience, from the perspectives of youth who are “out-of-place” in some way and coping well with their displacement.

The International Resilience Project aims to develop a better, more culturally sensitive understanding of how youth around the world effectively cope with the adversities that they face. The IRP uses a unique cross-cultural approach that employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine individual, interpersonal, family, community and cultural factors associated with building resilience in youth around the world.

This collective of service provision and research aimed to address recommendations made by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa that included the need to explore alternative educational options for marginalised youth in high-risk contexts as well as educational components for street initiatives. Working within a contextual, eco-systemic model, the program sought to understand individuals, families and communities participating in the project within a social constructivist paradigm, using largely narrative and image-based methods of study.