Summer Archives

Naeha Haridasa Cambridge, MA - Next Step

Measuring Resilience and Vulnerability

This past summer I completed my Ingram Summer Project in Boston, MA with Next Step, a nonprofit that serves chronically ill young adults through skills-based programming and psychosocial therapy. My project, titled Measuring Resilience and Vulnerability, focused on assessing Next Step’s organizational model, Change Theory, in relation to its effectiveness for Next Step clients. Change Theory is a Next Step’s unique model, which seeks to prove the relationship between psychosocial therapy/ programming and biological health as well as overall quality of life. This theory sits in a very new and unexplored realm of research on health and happiness. Thus, proving the effectiveness of Change Theory would not only benefit Next Step’s programming and ability to serve the needs of clients but also provide a model for researchers and donors interested in funding and sponsoring similar projects.

The first month of my project consisted of work out of Next Step Central’s office in Cambridge. I spent time doing academic research and consultations with various Next Step affiliates to determine (1) key psychosocial and biological to do research on and (2) ways to assess Change Theory. By the end of the first four weeks, I developed a survey tool to track psychological progress for Next Step clients and a goal setting worksheet to help clients plan for an independent living situation. The second month of my project was spent volunteering my time as a counselor and facilitator for Next Step’s three residential summer programs. This half of my project was largely the “implementation phase” where I had the chance to pilot the feedback measures that I had developed and use the data to offer improvements to Change Theory. These four weeks also gave me the chance to learn directly about illness and health from participants themselves. Much of my time was spent interacting with the youth and creating therapeutic spaces for them to talk about their struggles with illness.

In designing and completing my project, two concepts, vulnerability and resilience, became keystones. Both my research and interactions with the individuals at Next Step programs revealed that, despite the struggles and hardship that these individuals have faced due to illness, their ability to be simultaneously vulnerable and resilience made them remarkably strong and inspiring people. Time and time again during the residential programs, I witnessed the remarkable way in which community support, survivor solidarity and vulnerability fostered a deep sense of resiliency in the face of illness for these individuals. To see individuals who had struggled for their entire lives with the stigma of HIV or disability allow themselves to become vulnerable and open up about their struggles was so powerful and humbling. I could see and feel the positive impact that Next Step programs had on their lives. Though this summer began as a way for me to work with issues of illness and mental health, it became a huge turning point in the way I now empathize and understand the larger impacts of poor health on communities.

For more, please visit Next Step.