Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) youth as researchers teams taking initiative to tackle problems related to mental well-being and education during the COVID-19 pandemic
Youth as Researchers (YAR) is a global initiative on COVID-19 where young people from all regions of the world collaborate on either global, regional, or national teams with other youth to design and conduct their own research projects. These focus on exploring the impact of COVID-19 on youth and on providing tangible recommendations for post-pandemic recovery.
Everyone from the Steering Committee, to the trainers, to the team coordinators, to the researchers, volunteer their time to coordinate, build capacities of, and collaborate with youth to make this experience possible. UNESCO and its offices around the world, the UNESCO Chairs at the National University of Ireland Galway and Penn State University, and the YAR partners support the youth researchers through aspects such as training, mentoring, coordination, event planning, and publication of research in credible scientific journals.
In this article, the UNESCO Youth as Researchers (YAR) initiative is featuring four different teams (two country teams from Haiti, one LAC regional team representing multiple countries from the LAC region, as well as one Brazil country team) that do not let the pandemic get them down; rather, they step up to face different challenges.