Base de données de recherche des TNO

Régions: Sahtu Settlement Area

étiquettes: social sciences, food security, youth perspective

Objectif(s): To mobilize Indigenous youth in advancing connection, understanding, and taking collective action to address their own flourishing through food systems innovations, and community partnerships, including constraints and opportunities to improve their own flourishing and that of their communities.

Description du projet: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5198. The overall purpose of this study is to mobilize Indigenous youth in advancing connection, understanding, and taking collective action to address flourishing through food systems innovations, and community partnerships, including constraints and opportunities to improve the flourishing and that of the communities. Specific objectives are: 1)To build shared understanding of Northern youth’s perspectives related to food choices and security, and attitudes towards food and flourishing environments; 2)To broaden the conceptual framework for Human Flourishing to better capture social, physical, mental, economic, cultural, and spiritual elements, within an Indigenous youth-centered approach; 3)To enrich the understanding of Human Flourishing, expanding relevant metrics and targets, within a life course approach, and by informing the development of the new model using qualitative tools (photovoice, storytelling);4) To understand the underlying structural issues relating to Indigenous Peoples' food systems, food security and food sovereignty, and through these understandings help youth to design community initiatives to improve well-being and flourishing; 5)To use lessons learned to co-design a comprehensive framework to addressing food security, food sovereignty, and food systems solutions to Northern youth flourishing. The study approach involves active listening to youth voices and help to develop skills to facilitate youth flourishing. With local community advisory research teams, the research team will employ a collaborative framework, focusing primarily of participatory methods, photovoice and story telling. Experience-based co-design based on Indigenous research recommendations will guide study design. This Indigenous co-design will include sharing circle focus groups, to develop a respectful and collaborative mechanism. These approaches have been well established in the literature and frequently employed by members of the interdisciplinary research team during interactions with Indigenous communities in northern Canada. Through a decolonizing and community-based participatory research lens, a platform for continued dialogue and resources to be used in education and training of Indigenous youth to support improved programming that focuses on the multidimensional lens of youth flourishing and food systems solutions. The pilot study will comprise a minimum of 40 participants, Indigenous youth males and females between ages 14 to 19 (n=10), parents, school staff, elders, knowledge keepers and users, and community leaders. Criteria for including participants are youth in high school and out of school. Exclusion criteria will include those outside the age ranges and those whose parents (caregiver) or the participant did not consent. As a prerequisite, a literature review will be carried out to include various sources and themes. The review will ensure we broaden the conceptual framework for Human Flourishing that better captures the dimensions economic, social, physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual elements of human flourishing. Data will be gathered from different sources (such as NWT’s Bureau of Statistics, the Canadian Community Health Survey, the Aboriginal Peoples Survey, and the First Nations Regional Health Survey) that enable the research team to understand historical trends in food security at the community level and its interdependencies with cultural, demographic, socio-economic, and environmental changes. The assembling of such a data set may shed light on changes in traditional vs. marketed food consumption and the effect on food security. Community engagement initiatives will include homogeneous focus group-sharing circles among participants: 8-10 participants; one group will be parents of student participants and the other will be school staff, elders, community leaders. These are expected to take no longer than 120 minutes and participants only need to participate in one session. These activities will be held face to face and/or virtually. Similar to other qualitative methodology, discussions will be recorded and transcribed verbatim with permission by Crawford. The research questions that will guide initial focus-group sharing-circles feature questions related to the local food systems. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats exercise will be used to uncover the opportunities and challenges and strategies the community can employ to enhance strengths and opportunities and limit weaknesses and threats to adolescent flourishing. Probing questions will engage participants in critical reflection of the questions asked. Photovoice is a community based participatory research model in which youth can share images that will convey meaning across language and cultures. Using photovoice/art as the qualitative method will also include focus group discussions to garner rich, more culturally appropriate data. It allows participants to express themselves and share their experiences in creative ways. These methods will be used to document opportunities and barriers to flourishing and to begin the process of critical reflection on what prevents or promotes flourishing among youth girls. Photovoice and storytelling will capture the voices of Indigenous youth and through this process gain the opportunity for meaningful involvement in the research process and creation of youth narratives. These methods will be used to document (a) youth knowledge and attitude towards the food systems, youth food choices and influencing factors, (b) explore the understanding of youth flourishing, and (c) opportunities and barriers to flourishing. This will help begin the process of critical reflection on what prevents or promotes flourishing among Indigenous youth. The photovoice workshop will engage participants in training for picture taking using their smart phones and uploading photos to a Usask managed platform (ex. OneDrive). The workshop will be conducted over three class periods for 1-hour each period. The training will also include protecting privacy (no photos of third parties), personal safety, and ensuring accurate representation of the pictures taken to ensure ethically sound data is collected. This practice has the added benefit of encouraging participants to think critically as they explore the photovoice process. Participants will be asked to take pictures of their environment (school, community) of what they perceive enable or hinder their own flourishing over a period of 3-4 days. Participants are not to take photos of third parties, and these photos will not be included in the study. Researchers will also emphasize that the individual retains ownership of the photographs. Participating high school students (co-researchers) will be brought together in focus group sharing circles to discuss a selection of 5-6 photos taken. Participants in focus group sharing circles will be able to organize, analyze, and reflect on the photos. Organization of photos into categories will help the research team understand the barriers to, and opportunities for, adolescent flourishing (including: the environment-local food system, impact on food choice/ well-being/flourishing). The analytical framing can also help guide the participants in the critical analysis of the specific components (e.g., cultural, social, political, economic, spiritual, historical) of human flourishing. Youth-led expo will showcase perspectives and narratives within their community based on the photovoice sessions. These co-researchers among with community leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders in the community will determine other avenues for dissemination including a policy forum. Youth will provide permission to use photos and/or identifying factors prior to expo. Transcripts of the focus group sharing circle discussions, community engagement activities and field notes will be reviewed by selected members of the research team. Data will be categorized into themes based on the studies research questions and the data collected. It is anticipated study results will lead to unique findings and lessons learned that will be disseminated through several platforms. First, dissemination will be real-time through the participatory research process, by engaging and connecting Indigenous youth with community cultural leaders, economic development champions, knowledge keepers, policymakers, and influencers. At study end the research team will conduct youth led virtual Zoom meetings community engagement activities for policy uptake. These activities will help to fine-tune methodologies for scale-up of intervention to several communities in NWT. Furthermore, channels for dissemination of research results include publication of a peer-reviewed article and a youth-led expo showcasing participants work order. To ensure the free flow of information a website will be constructed to share findings and important news, communities will be engaged through sharing circles, community forums, and assorted face to face interactions. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from May 6, 2022 to December 31, 2022