Resilience

 

Areas: Central West Bank

 

This project focuses on studying resilience amongst adolescents from different cultures by bringing together researchers from different theoretical orientations and service providers working with high-risk youth in order to develop culturally appropriate research methods for understanding resiliency in at risk populations.

 

Objectives of the project:

   - To assess qualities that are associated with resiliency within aboriginal adolescent populations and to isolate the factors that adolescents perceive as contributing towards their ‘doing well’ and the specific variables, including individual, familial,  community-related, and cultural factors that they believe are associated with their doing well;

   -  To compare the experiences and narratives of aboriginal adolescents who are perceived to be doing less well or experiencing difficulties in their lives and to isolate the factors that they perceive as contributing to their present difficulties and the perceived barriers to their success, including individual, familial, community-related, and cultural factors.

 

The result of this research will be published this year. It is worth noting that PYALARA wrote a chapter dealing with resilience in Palestine that will be published in a book called Pathways to Resilience. Also worthy of mention is that at the conclusion of the research period, an international conference will be held 15-17 June 2005 at the Maritime School of Social Work, Dahousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, during which a number of speakers from different parts of the world will elaborate on pathways to resilience based on their experience.