This photo exhibition was curated by Ryan Trudeau with data collected from his Master's research with the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill University (Supervised by Dr. Claudia Mitchell) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2014. The photos in this exhibition represent the ways in which youth in Haiti are currently seeing education. The images provoke the viewer to think about well-being and what this might mean in a post-disaster and developmental context, such as Haiti’s current state. Aligning with the Institute for Human Development and Well-Being's (IHDW) focus on research of graduate students who have an active passion in working with groups around development and well-being, this qualitative participatory exploration of the perspectives of Haitian youth aimed at investigating what Haitian youth identified as the barriers to their development in terms of educational advancement and leadership opportunities.
Additionally, this study encouraged participants to identify solutions to these barriers, in turn promoting self generated sustainable development. This study empowered Haitian youth by giving them opportunities to voice their concerns, in turn enabling them to share what they believed were and still are acting as barriers to their educational advancement and the obtainment of potential leadership opportunities. The participants used this study as a platform to express themselves visually as well as artistically, voicing their ideas through arts-based methodologies such as storyboard/drawing and Photovoice, which also included the use of focus groups as an inclusive research design. As a result, these processes lead to the creation of relevant themes related to their identified barriers, fostering meaningful development, creating awareness, and ‘jumpstarting’ the possibility for sustainable change for future generations of Haitian youth.
