Belonging
Belonging is something people feel inside. For a person to feel like they belong, the people and community around them need to accept them. Our team has done previous research with youths with ID (click here) about belonging. The main thing youth said again and again was that they wanted to feel like they belonged. Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t, but, most often, it was some of both. What is important though, is that belonging can always be added to and made stronger in many different ways.
The Belonging Matters Framework includes four main ways that build belonging:
- Having social relationships
- Interacting with people who are similar
- Having meaningful roles in the community
- Finding a good fit
The Belonging Framework came out of a previous project led by Dr. Rebecca Renwick, called the Voices of Youths (VOY) research project. The VOY project was also with and about young adults with IDD. We asked them to tell us about their experiences of community life. We found out that belonging (or not) was a very important part of community for the young adults. Sports were one way that some of the young adults took part in the community. Sometimes sports helped them feel like they belonged and sometimes not. This finding made our research team wanted to take a closer look at belonging in sport for young adults with IDD.