How can we use the tool to improve resilience programming for youth?

• In Event: Monitoring and Measuring Youth Resilience for improved programing: A case in Colombia

Proposal

The Colombia Resilient Youth Activity (CRYA), funded by USAID, and implemented by ADCI/VOCA, accompanies young people from 10 to 29 years of age in 30 municipalities. The objective is to support youth to reach their full potential as safe, productive, healthy and committed members of society with access to safe environments that prevent and mitigate risks associated with violence and delinquency.
This program proposes a holistic systems approach involving various local actors to analyze the root causes of youth vulnerability and co-create activities, with a socio-ecological perspective, which addresses the individual as the center and involves families, communities, private sector and public institutions, among other actors.
CRYA implements initiatives using inputs provided by the tool to adjust and customize the offer to young people within the activity to achieve the expected results. The tool provides inputs that allow for the initiatives and the support provided to the program's youth to be tailored and individualized through its differentiated accompaniment route (Individual Youth Resilience Plan). These inputs shed light on both the individual and municipal level on which dimensions and factors present the greatest challenges or opportunities to improve the effectiveness of territorial project activities.
This panel will share how, through the analysis of YRAT information, it is possible to align and focus on the aspects that have a significant impact on youth resilience and how the strengthening of the individual (individual dim factors) and the mobilization of local supply are articulated. For example, initiaitves that promote the use of free time, the partners plan activities through sports, culture or art; with the analysis of the YRAT of the young participants, it is possible to identify the life skills that should be strengthened through the relationship of young people, what would be the emphasis on the themes to be communicated through art or culture (self-esteem, prevention of PAS consumption, communication in the school environment).
Additional initiatives of CRYA offer activities of resignification of public spaces, where awareness-raising processes for care, mural painting for beautification and elaboration of messages that strengthen the social fabric are contemplated. For these initiatives, the results of the YRAT allow us to orient the content of the messages for the muralism, i.e., if it is identified that civility is one of the most critical factors in young people, and also the perception of community attachment is negative, then the training process promotes the deepening of these issues and manages to materialize the articulation and use of the information provided by the tool.
Finally, with the results by municipality and individual results of the tool, the process of individual and collective accompaniment of the participants is oriented and punctuated, responding to their needs and expectations and achieving a better understanding of the reality that youth perceive about themselves and their environment, to translate it into actions that impact their journeys.

Author

• Angela Suárez, ACDI/VOCA