Patterns of resilience among young people in a community affected by drought: Historical and contextual perspectives

自然灾害，包括由干旱等灾害引起的自然灾害，对社会、经济和环境系统产生负面影响，影响到青年人的心理健康和福祉。在撒哈拉以南非洲，干旱对青年人的影响尤其严重，那里经常发生的干旱与不平等、排斥、教育水平低下和缺乏就业技能等发展挑战交织在一起。因此，重要的是要了解是什么使青年人能够承受、适应、抵制或挑战这些影响（即具有复原力）。韧性是关于战胜和改变几率的。因此，同样重要的是如何最好地支持年轻人反思和传达他们的弹性反应，以及成年人（包括地方和国家政府）如何“改变”使年轻人处于风险之中的可能性。 为了更好地理解干旱、社会生态系统（如家庭、学校、政府、自然环境）和复原力之间的复杂关系，本提案概述了一项跨学科研究，以探讨生活在遭受干旱挑战的南非姆普马兰加省戈万姆贝基市的年轻人的复原力。这项研究将采用社会生态方法，特别关注社会和环境系统如何促进和限制受干旱挑战的青年人的复原力。这项研究将解决一系列问题。随着时间的推移，戈万姆贝基市的干旱严重程度如何变化？生活在该市的青年认为自己的健康和福祉优先事项是什么？这些年轻人如何定义干旱时期的复原力？青年人及其家庭、社区、文化和物质环境的哪些特点使他们更能承受与干旱有关的压力？青年在经历和适应干旱方面是否存在性别差异和其他社会人口差异？如何才能最好地支持青年人思考和宣传他们对干旱的反应？为了回答这些问题，我们将综合运用科学、艺术和社会科学的方法。首先，我们将使用在南非存档的历史文件（如报纸，殖民地记录）的信息，结合降雨量数据，产生一个干旱严重程度的时间线的研究领域回到世纪中期。与社区合作伙伴和当地硕士生合作，我们将鼓励戈万姆贝基的年轻人利用艺术活动来探索和交流他们的个人，家庭，社区，文化和环境对干旱的反应。根据干旱严重程度的时间轴，每个年轻人还将被要求与一名成年人交谈，收集与干旱有关的社区变化的历史叙述，并探讨社区如何应对这些变化。学术团队、学生、青年和社区组织将利用这些活动产生的数据，共同制定一项战略，以支持年轻人应对干旱相关挑战。这一战略将利用戏剧来分享知识，并制定集体办法来应对环境挑战和机遇。将支持青年研究人员确定他们选择的创造性媒介，通过这种媒介向相关利益攸关方传达他们的紧急复原力战略。这可能涉及展览、特定地点的电影和/或现场表演活动。青年研究人员将在传播中发挥中心作用。所产生的数据将共同构成一个有用的案例研究，研究来自戈万姆贝基的年轻人的复原力，以及他们的物质和社会生态。我们打算利用这项研究的方法和结果作为未来大规模调查的基础，以评估我们的结果对南部和撒哈拉以南非洲其他遭受干旱的社区的年轻人的相关性。

Natural disasters, including those that arise from hazards such as drought, negatively impact upon the social, economic, and environmental systems that affect young people's mental health and wellbeing. The impacts of drought on young people are particularly severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where recurrent drought intersects with development challenges such as inequality, exclusion, poor education and a lack of employability skills. It is important therefore to understand what enables young people to withstand, adapt to, resist or challenge these impacts (i.e. to be resilient). Resilience is about beating and changing the odds. So, equally critical are how young people can be best supported to reflect on and communicate their resilient responses, and how adults (including local and national governments) can 'change the odds' that place young people at risk. To understand better the complex relationships between drought, social-ecological systems (e.g. family, school, government, the physical environment) and resilience, this proposal outlines an interdisciplinary study to explore the resilience of young people living in the drought-challenged Govan Mbeki municipality of Mpumalanga, South Africa. The study will adopt a social ecological approach, with a particular interest in how social and environmental systems enable and constrain the resilience of young people challenged by drought. The study will address a series of questions. How has drought severity in the Govan Mbeki municipality changed over time? What do youth living in the municipality identify as their own health and wellbeing priorities? How do these young people define resilience in times of drought? Which characteristics of young people, and their families, communities, culture and physical environments, make them more resilient to drought-related stress? Are there gender and other socio-demographic differences in the way youth experience and adapt to drought? How can young people be best supported to reflect upon and communicate their responses to drought? To answer these questions, we will use a blend of approaches from the sciences, arts and social sciences. First, we will use information from historical documents archived in South Africa (e.g. newspapers, colonial records), combined with rainfall data, to produce a time-line of drought severity for the study area back to the mid-19th century. Working with a community partner and local masters students, we will then encourage young people from Govan Mbeki to use arts-based activities to explore and communicate their personal, family, community, cultural, and environmental responses to times of drought. Armed with the timeline of drought severity, each young person will also be asked to talk to one adult to gather historical narratives of drought-related changes to their community and explore how the community coped with these changes. The academic team, students, youth and community organisations will use the data generated from these activities to co-produce a strategy to support the resilience of young people to drought-related challenges. This strategy will use drama to share knowledge and develop collective approaches to environmental challenges and opportunities. The youth researchers will be supported in identifying a creative medium of their choice through which to communicate their emergent resilience strategy to relevant stakeholders. This might involve an exhibition, site-specific film and/or live performance event. The youth researchers will take centre stage in the dissemination. Together, the data generated will form an instrumental case study of the resilience of young people from Govan Mbeki, as well as that of their physical and social ecology. We intend to use the approach and findings of this study as the basis for a future large-scale investigation that will assess the relevance of our results to young people in other drought-stricken communities in South and sub-Saharan Africa.