In communities grappling with systemic adversity, the challenges facing youth often extend far beyond individual struggles—they reflect broad social and economic barriers. This project seeks to illuminate pathways to sustainable youth hope and flourishing in one of the most inequitable regions of the world. Existing studies of youth hope often focus on individual success and do not sufficiently explain how youth hope and flourish in historically marginalized contexts. Through a partnership between iThemba Projects, a community-based organization, and Hope College, this project will study youth flourishing and hope for a greater good.
For youth to flourish, they need more than a single intervention. They need a holistic program that engage their households, schools, and saturates their neighborhoods. For over 20 years, iThemba has partnered with Mpumuza, taking a holistic restoration perspective: home gardens, early child development, educational support, leadership development, and more. Their youth programming, which reaches over over 1,500 youth/year, provides a vessel to collect data on an entire cohort of youth in the community.
Our mixed-methods approach studies hope and flourishing from three angles:
–Qualitative insights: Interviews with adolescents, parents, and youth mentors will illuminate the barriers and catalysts to youth hope and flourishing.
–Longitudinal trajectories: Five waves of data across 18 months will track how iThemba’s interventions (such as life skills classes and mentorship) and adolescent risk factors (misinformation and isolation) impact trajectories of youth hope and flourishing.
–Ecological perspective: Household-level data will uncover the extent to which saturating families with support programs (e.g., gardens, early childhood interventions) fosters hope and flourishing.
We combine cutting-edge research and local expertise to understand how to build hope in the face of profound challenges.
