YOUTH vision & voice
Download and read the report: www.resiliencebydesign.com/youthvoiceswb.
As the Youth Voices Rising Project Lead and a Postdoctoral Fellow, I am working with the Canadian Red Cross and the ResiliencebyDesign Lab at Royal Roads University in the Wood Buffalo region to:
- Strengthen youths’ capacities to engage as active citizens in disaster recovery & resilience decisions (i.e. through a social media campaign, action research, leadership events and individual capacity strengthening)
- Support existing community-based, youth-serving organizations to run visual storytelling and participatory activities aimed at building resilience (i.e. PhotoVoice, creative arts, community mapping, etc.).
- To contribute to a shared understanding of disaster resilience across the region (i.e. knowledge mobilization, youth worker events for youth workers in Indigenous communities, public speaking at conferences, and report and academic publications).
#YOUTHVOICESWB
Social media campaign
Youth in Wood Buffalo are creative, innovative citizens with a vision for vibrant, resilient communities. They have unique concerns, ideas, views, and experiences as they recover from the 2016 Horse River wildfire disaster, and become even more resilient. In 2017, the YVR project developed a social media campaign with youth and local partners, with the question: “What would you do to make your community better?”
In response, more than 350 youth created original songs, photography, artworks, poetry, talks, art installations, dance, drawings, sticky notes, storyboards, and other media to offer their ideas. An analysis of the youth responses resulted in identifying five key youth-generated priorities for disaster recovery in their communities:
1) transportation; 2) health & wellbeing; 3) education; 4) volunteerism; and 5) participation and activity.
#YouthVoicesWB aimed to not only highlight what youth want as a new normal after the wildfire disaster; but also to build peer networks and connect the diversity of youth ideas to community decision-makers so they could bouncing forward together through responsive action.
youth resilience & photovoice
In the summer of 2018, youth from the Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation and First McKay First Nation developed two photography exhibits that highlight in photos and story how Elders, nature, tradition, community connection, friends, and sports positively impact their lives.
“We Are Resilient: We See the Positive” (CPDFN)
“Through the Eyes of Youth” (FMFN)
youth voices rising in action
In 2019, we will connect youth ideas to action by supporting activities developed through local youth-adult partnerships in the region, including an Indigenous Leadership event.