Wyoming Resilience Research Project Seeks Photos, Stories from County Residents

Jean Garrison and Jason McConnell from the UW’s Malcolm Wallop Civic Engagement Program are seeking help from Sheridan and other communities around Wyoming for the UW Profiles in Wyoming Resilience Research Project. The purpose of the program is to get a better picture of the opportunities and barriers Wyoming citizens face to academic achievement, employment, and community resilience. We believe a picture is worth a thousand words.

This PhotoVoice project asks participants to provide photos along with short descriptions of what each picture means to you, thus sharing your view of your community. This project aims to empower Wyoming communities to help each other by identifying common problems and ways to overcome adversity. It is also a way to share why your community is resilient. You must be 18 or older to participate.

For Example: This is a great chance to show off something in your community and explain how it creates an opportunity for your hometown and possibly others. You also can share what you see as a challenge, or a barrier that needs to be addressed. The point is to gather these perspectives together to see how we can connect the dots across the state.

Once gathered, the broad range of citizen and stakeholder voices serve as the basis to develop profiles of our communities, which can better inform state and local programming. These profiles and pictures will be shared to the public through an interactive website and the project will host follow up focus groups and community discussions.

Participating only takes 10 minutes. The photos and/or descriptions can be shared from your Phone or PC multiple ways: Photos can shared directly through this survey link: at .

When you sign in you will be prompted to upload picture(s) and write a caption(s) that explains what this picture represents to you. There is also a link on the website to the survey, as well as options to share photos using Flickr, posting through social media, and by email to wallop@uwyo.edu. There is a short recorded webinar to learn more at . If there are any questions, contact the website and they will be happy to help.

According to Garrison in the news release, “This project started because we do a lot of travel and work around Wyoming and have heard things that people are proud of in their community and also heard about challenges. We feel like these conversations have been going on for a long time and this project is an opportunity to bring this knowledge together. We started talking about this last summer and were motivated by the context of the pandemic to find a platform to gather peoples perspectives so we could share knowledge across communities. We started in fall 2021 to put the project together and to get partners around the state who would share out information on the project. We launched in in early January and will continue gathering pictures through May.” She added, “Thank you for sharing this information widely with colleagues, friends, and family!”

To learn more, contact Jean Garrison at wallop@uwyo.edu or check out our website at http://www.uwyo.edu/wallop/. You can also follow along with the Profiles in Wyoming Resilience Project through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.