CLARITY’s World Café

Creating Synergy, Harmony and Bridging Silos

On May 24th the CLARITY Project hosted their World Café style event, created to reimagine the role of community in creating resilience and protecting against youth suicide. This KGH Foundation-sponsored event brought together 60 change-makers, content experts, community leaders and youth advocates at Kelowna’s Rotary Centre for the Arts located on the beautiful unceded territory of the Syilx Nation. Syilx Nation Knowledge Keepers Pamela and Grouse Barnes opened the event and set the tone for grounded, future-facing conversations.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among youth in Canada and the world (1). Supporting community resilience, the dynamic process of adapting and feeling hopeful together, in the face of challenges and through collective action, is a promising method of suicide prevention (2–4). Folks from across the Central Okanagan engaged in vibrant dialogue as they cycled between small, café-like tables, answering questions about what community resilience means, where it is found in the Central Okanagan, and how service providers and community members might work to cultivate it.  

Key insights generated by CLARITY’s World Café highlighted needs for inter-organizational and inter-generational collaboration, validating and centring youth voices in this work, and outside-the-box thinking as central to cultivating community resilience. 

People collaborating around table at CLARITY World cafe event
Person drawing on poster at CLARITY World Cafe event
Community leaders at CLARITY World Cafe event

CLARITY is continuing to create and support synergy and harmony in youth suicide prevention through community engagement in the Central Okanagan. Coming up next will be the creation of a documentary film (featuring youth voices to give life to CLARITY’s findings to date), publishing the CLARITY Partnership Charter (demonstrating practical considerations for equity-focused and youth-led governance processes), and hosting a community film festival (in Kelowna, in late Spring 2023). Stay up to date with all of CLARITY’s happenings through signing up for our newsletter here and/or following us on Instagram. 

By creating upstream community initiatives that wraparound all youth, CLARITY is sparking collective action towards building systems and structures that promote youth resilience to suicide.  To learn more click here or follow us on Instagram. 

References

  1. Shahram SZ, Smith ML, Plamondon K, Ben-David S, Feddersen M, Kemp TE. Promoting “Zest for Life”: A Systematic Literature Review of Resiliency Factors to Prevent Youth Suicide [Internet]. 2021. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12588
  2. Gallagher ML, Miller AB. Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior in Children and Adolescents: An Ecological Model of Resilience. Adolescent Research Review. 2018 Jun 1;3(2):123–54. 
  3. Navaneelan T. Suicide rates: An overview [Internet]. Ottawa; 2012 [cited 2019 Aug 25]. Available from: www.statcan.gc.ca,
  4. World Health Organization. Suicide: Key facts [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2019 Aug 25]. Available from: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide