Clarity Gallery
From the field.
Equity Science Lab — Active Project
A community-driven approach to youth suicide prevention in the Okanagan Valley.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025 · equityscience.caThe CLARITY Project is an equity-oriented, community-based research initiative focused on youth suicide prevention in the Okanagan Valley — on unceded Syilx territory.
Working alongside youth, families, and community partners, CLARITY takes an upstream approach: addressing the social, cultural, and structural conditions that shape youth wellbeing, long before crisis points are reached.
CLARITY brings together researchers, community members, youth advisors, and partner organizations to generate evidence that is rooted in lived experience — and to translate that evidence into meaningful systems change.
Rather than studying communities from the outside, CLARITY works from within — building trust, sharing power, and ensuring that the people most affected by youth mental health challenges are centred in every stage of the research process.
CLARITY stands for Community-Led Action for Resiliency Important Throughout Youth — a name that reflects its core commitment to community voice, youth leadership, and collective action.
— Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025A felt sense of belonging — to peers, to culture, to place, to community — is a critical protective factor for youth. Belonging strengthens connections to life and to others, providing vital buffers against isolation, hopelessness, and disconnection. CLARITY cultivates environments where youth feel seen, valued, and connected.
Plamondon & Shahram, 2025 · Equity Science LabStrong, trusted relationships are the foundation of resilience. Connection to peers, caring adults, mentors, culture, and land are all vital in promoting youth wellbeing. CLARITY works to strengthen connection not only at the individual level but across systems — helping to ensure that youth-serving programs are relational, inclusive, and supportive.
Plamondon & Shahram, 2025 · Equity Science LabA community's social climate — its norms, attitudes, structures, and sense of inclusivity — plays a key role in shaping youth wellbeing. CLARITY supports partners in building social climates that foster equity, trust, and belonging, and that recognize the ways in which structural inequities must be addressed to promote true resilience.
Plamondon & Shahram, 2025 · Equity Science LabThe CLARITY Collaborative began in 2017 as a community-led initiative focused on building a hope-guided bridge between family, community, philanthropy, and research. Its evolution has been shaped by a strong commitment to youth voice, equity, and resilience.
A comprehensive literature review examining existing evidence on resilience and youth suicide prevention — establishing the evidence base that would guide all future phases.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025A deliberative dialogue study explored how youth and caring adults understand and define resilience — grounding the project's direction in community knowledge and lived experience.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025Focused on raising awareness and strengthening partnerships, with youth leading the design of a governance model, a partnership charter, and the creation of a youth-led documentary.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025The project expanded partnerships and embraced an equity science approach. Using World Café methods to listen for direction, CLARITY launched the Regional Okanagan Youth Council (ROYC) and began co-designing upstream interventions with provincial partners including the Pacific Health Equity Network, SFU, and UVic.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025CLARITY is intentionally shifting toward serving as a connector and hub within the youth wellness ecosystem — because the need is not always for more programming, but for stronger connections between youth, services, and opportunities that already exist.
Youth advisors, community advisors, and caring adults shape the direction of the research and interventions through dialogue-based activities — ensuring community voice leads and youth priorities are centred at every level.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025CLARITY strengthens referral pathways, reduces duplication, and shares tools and research across partner organizations — supporting a more connected and aligned system of youth-serving programs and services.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025An independent, centralized, evidence-driven Youth Core that diversifies the voices shaping our communities — lessening the load on individual organizations and offering a collaborative space where youth leadership can grow and directly inform systems-level change.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025Youth feedback directly informs collaborative design. The Youth Core functions as governance and research infrastructure — youth shape research priorities, youth inform collaborative design, and knowledge is generated through ongoing engagement.
Equity Science Lab · CLARITY Project · 2025Plamondon, K., Huisken, A., Khan, S., Ben-David, S., Fedderson, M., & Shahram, S.Z. (2025). "Resilience is action taken together" — Results of a dialogue-based study on community factors shaping resilience in the context of youth suicide prevention. Critical Public Health.
Open Access →Plamondon, K. & Shahram, S., on behalf of the CLARITY Project team (2022). Reimagining the role of community in resilience. CLARITY World Cafe Booklet. 24 May 2022: Rotary Centre for the Arts, Syilx Nation Territory (Kelowna, BC).
Open Access →Shahram, S. Z., Smith, M. L., Ben-David, S., Feddersen, M., Kemp, T. E., & Plamondon, K. (2021). Promoting "zest for life": A systematic literature review of resiliency factors to prevent youth suicide. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 31(1), 4–24.
Open Access →Blenk Family Fund in collaboration with CLARITY — World Café: Creating Synergy, Harmony and Bridging Silos. A community gathering sponsored by the KGH Foundation.
Read more →We work with community members, youth advisors, and partner organizations. If CLARITY's work resonates with you, we'd love to hear from you.