The resilience of young adults in a context of drought

Abstract

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the factors that enable the resilience of young adults who experienced drought in Leandra. Against the background of ongoing global warming, it is important to understand what enables the resilience of young adults in a context of drought so that pathways for drought-resilient livelihoods may be created for these young people. In order to achieve this purpose, I took an interpretivist stance as it supports an inductive qualitative inquiry that is suitable for gaining an understanding of the experiences and perceptions of young adults in a context of drought. I adopted a phenomenological research design to ensure that my research questions are answered. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants of the study. Ten young adults (five women and five men) aged between 20 and 24 years from Leandra in the Govan Mbeki district of Mpumalanga were selected. Arts-based activities (drawand- write, body-mapping and “sand-tray” work) were used in groups to generate data. A thematic data analysis was done to identify the themes that emerged from the data. The themes relating to aspects of drought that young adults found difficult to deal with were: unmet basic needs (lack of water and lack of food); economic hardship (expensive products and job loss) and compromised hygiene. I used Ungar’s (2011) Social Ecology of Resilience Theory (SERT) to frame my study and found that the resilience-enabling themes that emerged, aligned with his theory. In the individual system, themes that emerged were: having positive personal characteristics (optimism and altruism); having a religious engagement; keeping busy to stress less; and exercising agency and water-use habits. In the family system the emerging theme was protective parenting, while in the community system it was initiatives to solve drought-related challenges (formal pragmatic initiatives and community connectedness). From these themes, it can be concluded that educational psychologists who counsel drought-challenged young adults in Leandra need to work from an eco-systemic perspective and include people like parents and municipal staff in programmes or initiatives that enable resilience for young adults.