Research Effectiveness meets Resilience

Resilience.
Victoria, CA
Over February 22-23, 2018, Dr. Brian Belcher, Rachel Claus, and Rachel Davel from the Sustainability Research Effectiveness (SRE) team supported the facilitation of a workshop for a new Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight project entitled Youth-centric Social Innovation: Gen Z and Climate Change. The project is led by the Resilience by Design Lab at Royal Roads University. The workshop brought together a diverse group of 39 participants, including youth, First Nations, educators, climate researchers, and technology developers. The purpose of the two-day workshop was to launch the project and co-develop a preliminary Theory of Change for the project.
The SRE team led a Theory of Change process to support participant-led project design. The SRE team introduced Theory of Change concepts, demonstrated the utility of the concepts for research planning and evaluation, and helped facilitate discussion. Participants collectively identified the project’s vision and discussed possible activities that would strategically contribute to the realization of outcomes. The ideas shared during the first session were brought together in a Theory of Change model for the project, which was presented on the second day of the workshop for further elaboration and discussion. Participant feedback to the preliminary Theory of Change model highlighted the representation of diverse perspectives and ideas. These will be valuable for the Lab’s collaborative work moving forward.
This project provided an opportunity to explore the application of Theory of Change with a transdisciplinary group at project inception. In addition, the project exposed the SRE team to new creative methods to stimulate discussion around youth and climate solutions. Moreover, these discussions enabled participants’ ideas to feature more prominently within a Theory of Change framework.
Learn more about the Resilience By Design Lab and the project. Read more news posts from the Sustainability Research Effectiveness Program.
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