At such unprecedented times like these when COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on different communities across the world whilst severely affecting accessibility to many services, including access to education and health, youth have been struggling to find ways to withstand the collateral damage that has been inflicted on them by the pandemic. In an attempt of showing how Youth as Researchers (YAR) teams from different regions are working towards the same end goal-helping youth in these difficult times, the North America, Nigeria, and Eastern and Southern African Teams have been working tirelessly on their research towards understanding the ways which youth have invented to survive, and rather cohabitate with, the newly enforced circumstances by the pandemic.
To begin with, the all-female North America Team comprising Robin, Kristle, Lillian, Grace, Udeerna, Rashel, Bhargavi, and led by Sara Flora, have focused their research efforts on comprehending how youth are receiving information of COVID-19 through news sources. The aim is to decipher and analyze how the receiver of pandemic-related information transmitted via the news media triggers youths’ behavior in response to the pandemic, which led Flora and her team to believe that it was significant that youth received ‘accurate’ and ‘correct information’ about the pandemic. The purpose of this goes as far as emphasizing the impact of the news media on youth perceptions of the pandemic as well as the public safety/precautionary measures. As a result, those perceptions of COVID-19 will configure youth ‘risk behaviors’.
The team anticipates that youth who receive news from “more conservative” news media outlets may form a “skewed perspective” on the COVID-19 measures: “Youth will indicate that the pandemic has negatively impacted their mental health while inducing a decline in physical activity,” Flora stated.
The lockdown has as well increased financial and food insecurity due to financial barriers and other implications with the pandemic.
Mirroring similar themes to the North American Team’s team on the youth’s perceptions of Covid-19, the Nigeria Youth as Researchers Team (YAR), comprising Portia Ozioma Chigbu, Olanike Timipa-Uge, Iyanuoluwa Emmanuel Olalowo, Efetobor Stephanie Effevottu, David Otujor Okpatuma, Charles Falajiki, and Muhammad Suleiman Murkthar, and led by Falemara Babajide Charles, is tackling how youth are shaping their perceptions and opinions, and in effect, responding to the sudden transition to online learning due to the lockdown. The team seeks to understand how this shift has affected the Nigerian youth learning opportunities/experiences, and compartmentalize the barriers which youth come across as they’re accessing online education during the physical lockdown.
Charles foresees that the disturbance of the educational system as provoked by the pandemic may endure for a longer time than anticipated. However, he also highlights the crux of his Team’s research in being essential for “providing insight into the difficulties to learning opportunities created by the pandemic lockdown, which in turn can be maximized to make informed judgement on the ways in advancing formal learning and digital transformation of the educational system for Nigerian youth.”
There are also initial developments in the Southern and Eastern Africa Team, which is led by team leader Max Amanu from Uganda. Similar to the team from Nigeria, this team also deals with the topic of education. The Southern and Eastern Africa Team focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of young people in Africa in terms of learning. At the beginning, there were communication problems in the team regarding the language, but these were quickly resolved. A much bigger challenge for this team is that in the context of online data collection knowing that the internet access for young people in Africa is at a very low rate.
The team has already formulated initial hypotheses, which revolve around the factors influencing the education sector as well as the family situation. The plan is that further steps will be taken such as the creation of a survey for the collection of data after the approval. The team expects that recommendations will be made based on the findings of the study. We also expect that the findings of the study will be presented to key policymakers and relevant stakeholders in the education sector and tertiary institutions in Africa.
The main objective is to inform policy and find solutions for students and provide the necessary support to improve learning and create a conducive learning environment for youth in Africa.
All teams are now working on survey dissemination; in which they are supposed to promote their surveys on different social media platforms. Nonetheless, teams have expressed some concerns with this phase in particular, and these include “ensuring equal distribution of the survey form across the geopolitical zones in the country because of the online survey tool adopted,” as Charles put it, and guaranteeing an ultra-sized participation by respondents from different countries. All teams look forward to analyzing all the data once they’ve acquired a sufficient amount of responses to their surveys and ultimately presenting their findings through producing knowledge documents and presenting at the YAR Global Conference later this year.