Pathways to Resilience

What is the Resilience Research Centre?

The RRC is made up of a group of researchers from Dalhousie University. We do not wear white lab coats or conduct scientific experiments in test tubes. Instead, we do studies involving people, and more specifically, young people’s resilience.

What is resilience?

Sure it might sound like a complicated term but quite simply resilience refers to a youth’s ability to overcome challenges by using the supports available to him or her such as personal strengths, family, friends, school or services in the community.

What is the Pathways to Resilience Project all about?

We meet with young people, age 13 to 19 across Atlantic Canada to talk about the challenges that young people face and how they overcome problems. We also talk to youth about their relationships with family and friends, their experiences in school and their participation in community and extracurricular activities. A lot of the youth we meet with are involved with or have been involved with many services such as probation, foster care, group homes, psychologists, addictions programs, homeless shelters, alternative education centres, or correctional centres. We ask youth about their experiences with these services because we want to understand what helps youth do well and what doesn’t. Sometimes adults don’t want to hear what youth have to say but we feel that young people are experts about their own lives. A lot of the stories that youth share with us have many similarities, some are sad, some are inspiring, some are confusing, some are hopeful, some are funny, and some are frustrating.

What happens after we talk to youth?

In most cases, we meet with youth only once but there are some youth we meet with once a year to find out how things may have changed in their lives since we last saw them. The information we collect from young people is shared in reports and presentations to people who make decisions about youth programs and services and people who work directly with youth, such as teachers, psychologists, social workers, probation officers, and youth care workers. The goal in sharing this information is to encourage changes and improvement to be made to these services so that youth are given the type of help and support that is meaningful and useful to them.