Strategies for Resilience-Focused Interventions for Youth Within Collectivistic Cultures: Reflections on the Pathways to Resilience Project

Abstract

Traditionally resilience research has neglected understandings of what enables young people living in the global South, including South Africa, to develop well when their life circumstances are challenging. The fact that more recently resilience studies have begun to explain how context and culture outside of the global North shape processes of positive adjustment is, therefore, encouraging. However,studies which prioritise youth-voices and youth explanations of how context and culture shape resilience remain limited. As a result, promoting youth resilience inculturally and contextually sensitive and respectful ways remains a challenge. This challenge confounds the obligation of researchers and service providers, who work with young people challenged by disadvantaged contexts, such as South African townships, to develop evidence based interventions aimed at improving the wellbeing of young people. This chapter presents a strategy on how to design, implement,and monitor resilience-focused interventions with South African youth based on evidence-informed intervention practices stemming from the Pathways to Resilience Project (P2RP). In particular, this chapter foregrounds how cultural and contextual responsiveness is paramount to resilience-enabling interventions for marginalized youth from collectivistic cultures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)