Building Youth Resilience

Thursday afternoon I attended the “Building Youth Resilience: Ingredients for Success” session given by Janet Leadbeater of the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit. At this session Janet spoke about a program her Health Unit had piloted with the goal of increasing youth knowledge and practice of resiliency. The program targeted youth aged fifteen to seventeen. Resiliency was defined at one point in this session as “the ability to manage or adapt to life’s challenges and move forward with hope and optimism.” It was noted that moving forward is an important part and yet is not included in all definitions of resiliency. Interestingly, the morning's keynote speaker, Dr. Hammond, and his Resiliency Initiatives group were involved in evaluation of this program, and the Resiliency Initiatives framework was an important part of this.

This program was different in that there was no set curriculum for it. The PHNs delivering it were flexible with what they did and let the youth be a part of the process. They took the time to listen to the youth’s stories and suggestions. Although this opening up the program to be so flexible was difficult at first, Janet spoke of how they found that it led to the youth being more engaged with the program, even those they thought may be disruptive. The youth groups talked about a wide variety of topics, ranging from knowledge and skill development to dealing with change, stress, and pressure. After discussing these topics, the youth eventually created their own marketing campaign to promote what they had learned. Four very creative and well designed posters were made by the youth, as well as a video about how to deal with the stresses of transitioning from grade eight to grade nine.

Janet spoke about how from this experience some surprising things were learnt. The youth do not see their community as a strength for them, they do not feel the support of the community. However, Janet emphasized that it is up to the community to make a change, not the youth. She also mentioned that the youth struggled when asked to write about their own strengths; it was easy for them to talk about their weaknesses but not very easy to identify strengths. I believe this is something that must be addressed; we must help youth to be able to identify what they are good at. Constructive criticism is helpful to improve on weaknesses, but there must also be some praise to encourage youth and help provide them with a sense of self-worth. Thank you Janet for an insightful and engaging presentation!

-Josh