Building Resilience after Disasters through the Youth Leadership Program: The Importance of Community and Academic Partnerships on Youth Outcomes

Background: The Youth Leadership Program (YLP) was created as a school community-university partnership after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, The YLP goal was to support youth and improve by engaging them in disaster recovery initiatives. Objectives: The purpose of the study was to describe the development of the St. Bernard Parish YLP and evaluate if the program was associated with increasing self-efficacy and decreasing trauma symptoms. Specifically, this study explored how a mental health intervention related to hurricane recovery influenced students' perceived ability to achieve goals, fostering post-disaster self-efficacy. Methods: The YLP began in 2006, with two major initiatives; data were analyzed before and after YLP activities. Students completed disaster screenings annually, with measures of trauma symptoms and self-efficacy. Results: Findings from this study showed that students who participated in the YLP, compared with peers who did not participate, scored significantly higher on self-efficacy. In addition, an interaction effect revealed that gains in self-efficacy also resulted in reduced trauma symptoms for both groups of students. Conclusions: The YLP demonstrated how disaster response interventions supporting resilience-based leadership and empowerment influenced students' perceived ability to achieve goals fostering post-disaster resilience. Successful initiatives, such as the YLP, emphasize the importance of parallel and interactive individual, family and community support processes to enhance the recovery experience for both individuals and communities.