The CLARITY (Community-Led Action for Resiliency Important Throughout Youth) project is a local initiative building community resilience to prevent youth suicide in the Central Okanagan is co-led by IHLCDP Associates, Dr. Sana Shahram and Dr. Katrina Plamondon, both Assistant Professors in the School of Nursing at UBC Okanagan.
CLARITY began in 2018 as a community-driven act of care and response to the tragic loss of young people in the Okanagan due to suicide. The CLARITY team challenges conventional notions of resilience and youth suicide prevention by looking upstream and to community-building. It shifts the concept of resilience away from something born out of exposure to trauma, and toward something that is created together in community. By listening for direction and inviting partnership, CLARITY is a long-term research initiative that focuses on systems-level interventions, transforming the structures that create barriers to resilience and put youth at risk.
On May 24th, 2022 the CLARITY project hosted a World Café event at the Rotary Centre, bringing together more than 70 change-makers, leaders, champions, and content experts to collectively reimagine our community’s role in promoting youth resilience. Participants engaged in research-driven conversations and witnessed an arts-based recording that captured the groups’ generated understandings and directions for supporting youth wellness across the Central Okanagan.
CLARITY is a collaboration between the University of British Columbia, Interior Health, the Blenk Family Fund, KGH Foundation, and a Community Advisory Team representing many local partners. CLARITY is supported by funding from the Blenk Family Fund, the KGH Foundation, Interior Health, SSHRC, & Michael Smith Health Research.