The Syrian Canadian Sports Club: A Community-Based Participatory Action Research Project with/for Syrian Youth Refugees

Daniel B Robinson,Vanessa Currie,Ingrid M Robinson,Nathan Hall

doi:10.3390/socsci8060163

Abstract

In this paper, we share the rationale, process, and results related to a community-based participatory action research (PAR) project in which we, among other things, aimed to attend to the underrepresentation of newcomer youth in community sport and recreation pursuits. By way of engaging with one rural county’s Syrian youth refugee population while also attending closely to a social ecological framework, we first identified obstacles and opportunities related to multiple systems (i.e., individual, social/interpersonal, organizational/community, public policy). Drawing upon multiple data sources (i.e., photos and photovoice, participants’ drawings and notes, participant-researchers’ field notes, and focus group interviews) to inform our subsequent plan-act-observe-reflect action research cycles, we and our Syrian youth participants co-created and implemented the Syrian Youth Sports Club. In addition to describing the rationale and process related to this Syrian Youth Sports Club, we focus herein upon the results, which primarily relate to participants’ experiences becoming (physically literate) and belonging.

Highlights

Introduction and BackgroundBy way of developing a new national physical activity resource for newcomer youth, Canada’s premier physical and health education organization, Physical and Health Education Canada, recently signaled its recognition of the importance of facilitating sport and recreation participation for all (Stanec and Bhalla 2015)
The youth participants included the following: (1) nine relatively new-to-Canada Syrian youth refugees who regularly participated in all stages of this project; and (2) seven additional youth visitors who were friends or siblings of some of those in the Syrian Youth Sports Club
Youth participants of the Syrian Youth Sports Club who were present for all three stages participated fully in the action research project

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and BackgroundBy way of developing a new national physical activity resource for newcomer youth, Canada’s premier physical and health education organization, Physical and Health Education Canada, recently signaled its recognition of the importance of facilitating sport and recreation participation for all (Stanec and Bhalla 2015). One of Canadian Sport Policy 2012’s goals is related to sport for development (Sport Canada 2012). Such recognition is to be both expected and celebrated. Newcomer youth have been found to be less engaged in sport and recreation pursuits than their native-born peers (Tremblay et al 2006; van Wel et al 1996; van Wel et al 2006). Given these observations, gaining an understanding about newcomer youth’s relative (dis)engagement with these active pursuits is especially important. If one ascribes to the belief that all youth within

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion