6: Study Workshops

Designing the workshop process for this study was a delicate process. The Critical Youth Participatory Action Research (CYPAR) process takes significant time to engage with a community and for the participants to come to collective conclusions. Balancing giving the process enough time with maintaining a reasonable time commitment for the youth participants can be challenging. To find this balance, I choose to hold six two-hour workshops, one for each of the six major steps of the CYPAR process: relationship building, researching, group dialogues, community involvement, planning and design, and self-reflection. The workshops mirrored these six steps in that order. Additionally, little to no work was planned to be assigned between sessions to avoid overwhelming the participants. As with any project, I anticipated some participants might miss a workshop for circumstances outside of anyone's control, like sickness. All workshops were well attended, and participants who missed any information had the opportunity to connect with me and learn what happened in the previous workshop. During these workshops, the group navigated the CYPAR process and ultimately created their leadership development intervention for their peers.