Learning Opportunities

Target Audience: All teachers, administrators, guidance counsellors and partners are encouraged to attend.

Throughout this fast-paced, story-filled presentation, Dr. Ungar will show that resilience is much more than a child’s personal capacity to overcome adversity. It is instead a reflection of how well families, schools, service providers and communities work together to create opportunities for children and youth to navigate their way to the resources they need for well-being while making those resources available in ways that young people experience as meaningful. Using lively case examples and video of children across the United States and around the world who have been exposed to adversities such as family violence, mental illness of a caregiver, natural disasters, poverty, and racism, Dr. Ungar will demonstrate how we can design interventions that enhance children’s access to nine resources essential for resilience and mental health. Dr. Ungar’s work suggests the need for a culturally sensitive interpretation of what resilience means to children and their families from diverse backgrounds. His presentation will end with concrete examples of how communities have made resilience-promoting resources readily available to children and youth with complex needs.

Specifically, the learning objectives for this session are:

1. To deepen our understanding of how social and physical environments enhance resilience;
2. To become familiar with nine resilience-enabling factors that communities can improve in young people’s lives;
3. To learn how to develop the supports that build resilience;
4. To explore ways to show cultural sensitivity when developing resilience-promoting programs.