RYSE and Khulisa celebrate Mother’s Day in eMbalenhle

The Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) Project and Khulisa Social held a Mother’s Day celebration at eMbalenhle Sasol Club on Saturday, May 7.

Khulisa used the celebration to report on their five-year multi-national research project that was investigating youth resilience in communities impacted by the oil and gas industry in Canada (Drayton Valley) including Secunda and eMbalenhle in South Africa.

Another objective of the event was to draw the attention of these communities to key findings and the current activities of the RYSE and to celebrate the warm caregivers who listen, advise and inspire hope.

Lesley-Ann Van Selm from Khulisa said they conducted a dialogue circle for those present to provide feedback on the understanding of the role of warm caregivers in sustaining resilience amongst the youth and to enlist feedback from those present on what they would give back to the youth as “warm caregivers” to further enable their resilience.

Van Selm said the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments Project consists of nine young adult committee members who disseminate the research results in non-academic ways to stakeholders in the communities.

She also said Khulisa has supported the study from its inception and it has been commissioned to lead its knowledge translation effort to the community.

“The goal is for these activities to contribute to positive changes to policy and practice across sectors like education, industries, healthcare and government that facilitate resilience, and enhance youth health and well-being in the community.

“We are evaluating the effectiveness of the knowledge translation activities to understand the impact of youth engagement, capacity building and to better understand the impact of the research itself.

“Key findings were that youth resilience is only partly about youths’ personal strengths that is produced by themselves, their families, and their communities although personal strengths like having a warrior spirit, asking for help, or being future orientated , strong families and resourced communities matter as much or more for youth resilience,” Van Selm said.

“Cultural heritage like family culture, constructive community traditions, religion or spirituality protects youth mental health.

“School-going youth report more resilience when their teachers are kind and competent their because they care about their schooling or progress and motivate them,” said Van Selm.

Van Selm said fathers need to be made more aware of the importance of warmth being caring not to be mistaken with being weak and their role of maybe invisible because of the issue of being absent in their children’s lives.