(2REST) Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities: mapping street youth lived resiliences through analysis of secondary data

The lived realities for youth within many African cities are of rising inequality and poverty, made more pertinent due to the increasing in number and proportion of young people in African countries. Street youth remain hidden in policy debates as they approach adulthood living in situations of vulnerability and chronic and acute stress. Diverse approaches adopted by policy makers, governments, practitioners, and academics often fail to address the needs of street youth and can exacerbate their precarity; while street youth respond with approaches which often express degrees of personal resilience, despite negative inputs. Growing up on the Streets was a participatory longitudinal research project which resulted in a substantial dataset submitted to the UK Data Service, including reports of street youth daily experiences featuring chronic and acute stress as well as their resilient responses. (2REST) Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities is a two-year project that will analyse the secondary data from Growing up on the Streets using a multisystemic resilience approach and involving international partners including early career researchers and street youth.

2REST aims to explore the experinces of homeless street youth and their resilient reponses to diffculties as they grow up in contexts of stress and vulnerability in African cities. Through secondary data analysis of the Growing up on the Streets qualitative data, the objective is to go beyond individual person-centred responses to stress and understand the multiple systems involved in overcoming difficulties over space and time as young people grow up. The resulting evidence will provide a better understanding of street youth resilience and all the factors involved. The 2REST project further aims to translate these findings and apply the learning to outcomes for policy and practice in order to improve street youth lives.

2REST will build capacity through training and analysis, and create impactful, practical outcomes that can be used in policy development and implementation and street youth engagement. 2REST will deliver a significant evidence base on the nature of street youth multisystemic resilience and the support required from policy and practice linked to the principles of UNGC21, offering tools and applications for improving the lives and opportunities for street young people across Africa and globally and helping street youth to achieve adults lives they value.

2REST will engage (senior and early career) academic partners in the UK, South Africa and Uganda, supported by an engaged Advisory Board made up of global government, academic and practitioner partners who are knowledgeable in the field and in their contexts, plus street youth. International collaborations will take place virtually and in person with an international dissemination strategy that will span the Americas, Africa and Europe. By co-creating impact tools and academic conceptual and methodological thinking, 2REST will extend the purpose and use of the primary data set. By applying the analytical lens of multisystemic resilience to the rich secondary data set from Growing up on the Streets, 2REST will provide an evidence base for policymakers and practitioners to help redesign approaches to street children and youth.