Resilient young people dream and do connect
- Published on 5 Mar 2015
- HR Pulse staff writer
In the dusty dryness that is QwaQwa in the Eastern Free State, there is more growth than meets the eye.
Hundreds of young people born into poverty are dreaming dreams of going to university, achieving career success and coming back to change the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. They are not just dreaming, either. Through the Khazimula initiative of Prof Linda Theron of the Optentia research focus area on the Vaal Triangle Campus, they are pursuing their dreams by learning to “do” and “connect” with others.
Khazimula is an isiZulu word that means “to shine” and the 13- to 19-year-olds who are part of it certainly do that. Wearing dazzling yellow T-shirts emblazoned with Khazimula’s sun-like logo, they are full of hope that the future will be as bright as their shirts. “Our communities have taught us that young disadvantaged people shine when they are supported to dream, do and connect,” says Prof Theron.
“In other words, resilient young people dream about a better future and they plan accordingly. They connect to other people and also to spiritual beings like God or their ancestors. They take productive action, they ask for support, they make good use of resources and they make contributions to their communities. Critically, in all of this, their communities partner with them in their dreaming and their doing and their connecting.”
The Khazimula initiative equips young people with the practical skills to dream, do and connect, and was inspired by a five-nation research project, Pathways to Resilience (see www.Lindatheron.org and www.resilienceresearch.org). The five countries are Canada, China, Colombia, South Africa and New Zealand, and the funders are the International Community-University Research Alliance (ICURA) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), both of Canada.
Why are some more resilient than others?
“Since 2009 we have been investigating why some young people are resilient,” says Prof Theron, who is the principal investigator for South Africa. “To better understand why they do well in life despite adverse circumstances, we have been working with young people in disadvantaged communities and with adults in these communities.”
Altogether 7 500 young people across the five countries have been participating in the Pathways to Resilience project, including around 1 300 from the Thabo Mofutsanyana district in the Free State. The focus of Pathways to Resilience is on identifying pathways that result in positive psychosocial outcomes for vulnerable young people. These pathways could be formal services, such as child welfare, education, corrections and mental health, or informal support services from families and communities.
“What we have found is that informal, naturally occurring resources trump formal service provision in all five countries,” she says. “According to young people, what matters most to them are informal pathways. When formal service provision is respectful enough of young people’s culture and when service providers take time to build meaningful relational ties with young people, then formal services promote resilience processes.”
While a preference for informal pathways is the common denominator among youth from all five countries, the nature of these pathways differs from culture to culture. “In the Free State community where we are working, young people attribute their resilience to connecting with women – usually their mothers – and also with God and their ancestors. They have a reliable attachment to women figures and through their ancestors to God.”
Similar hopes and dreams in collectivist cultures
Prof Theron’s research team has also found that the young people they are working with in Thabo Mofutsanyana district tend to have similar hopes and dreams. “They have the great hope that being educated will lead to opportunities to go to university, and in turn to become employed, and to come back to make a difference to their mothers.”
She ascribes this shared dream to the collectivist culture in which the young people live. “China, which also has a collectivist culture, is similar. In collectivist cultures, young people are socialised to respect education so they can get a good job and provide for their parents.” However, cultures are fluid, and this is one reason why it will be important to do follow-up studies when the Pathways to Resilience study ends in June 2015.
Apart from cultural considerations, the team needs to continue following the young people into their next stage of life, as young adults, to see how their resilience processes are sustained, possibly in the face of new challenges. “Our concern is what if someone who is dreaming, doing and connecting now, passes matric and cannot go to university. What then? It is going to be very important to follow them after the five years of this study.” In the meantime, Prof Theron, herself an educational psychologist, has some suggestions on how psychologists and other providers of formal services can increase the value of these services in the eyes of young people.
“First, they must establish very respectful, nurturing relationships with young people,” she says. “Secondly, they can facilitate resilience by drawing on the resources that young people foreground, and being culturally, contextually and temporally sensitive. For example, in QwaQwa, young people have foregrounded their mothers and ancestors, but this may not be the case with youth in Soweto. “Thirdly, formal service providers who want to make a difference can support young people do dream, to do and to connect with others.”
