Participation and Engagement Barriers Faced by Young Black Women Within Health Promotion Youth Programming and Community Drop-In Spaces

Community drop-in spaces for young adults offer important youth programming that support the healthy psychosocial development of young people and offer strategies that promote positive mental health. Youth are able to connect to safe and caring adults, gain access to public health information and resources, avoid risky behaviour, benefit from health promotion programming, and positive youth development workshops. However, young black adults do not have the same access to such spaces, and young black women are further marginalized from safe spaces to learn, gather and engage with their peers and communities. In 2017, The Spot Youth Centre embarked on a community based Participatory Action Research (PAR) project to understand the barriers young Black women face in accessing youth spaces and youth programming. Our findings reveal the isolation and vulnerability of young Black women in low-income communities and the benefits of having safe community spaces that cater specifically to the needs of young Black women. This paper explores strategies for inclusion and engagement that can increase the overall participation of young women in youth spaces, specifically within low-income and under-served inner-city neighbourhoods. Our work will draw on the connections between positive mental health and wellness and having access to community drop-in spaces for positive psychosocial experiences with peers and healthy adults. Further, our work outlines the need for more inclusive needs-assessment research and the benefits of including service-users as active agents in the development and implementation processes of health promotion programming.