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Using Creative Action Research to Investigate How Youth Understand and Build Community Resilience in Post-Flood Southern Alberta
As the impacts of disasters and climate change intensify, the need to act collectively becomes more urgent. Grassroots leaders with flexible perspectives, creative approaches, and innovative and collaborative mindsets are needed to shift the status quo and re-imagine solutions to complex problems. Youth are a largely untapped resource and have immense leadership potential to address these global challenges. Although historically overlooked and perceived as vulnerable in the face of disasters and climate change, youth are both willing and able to contribute to establishing more resilient communities. Youth are also less habitual problem-solvers, more willing to take risks, early adopters of technology and innovation, and have a creative, vibrant energy that can be harnessed for social change. Building on the creative capacity, innovation, and agency of youth, the RbD Lab has developed a social innovation lab (SIL) process that offers young people tangible research skills and capacity-building opportunities while also engaging them as agents of change and innovation. The presenter will provide an overview of the social innovation process model, explain how it was developed and applied with youth in Southern Alberta, Canada, to generate community-relevant solutions related to climate change, disaster risk reduction, and resilience.