Life Skills Handbooks

Welcome

Welcome to Lifeskills Handbooks. This site is to help you to find and download the very best life skills resources we know about. It is also here to discuss issues and share ideas about teaching life skills sessions with children and young people. Join the community and the debates on this blog.

The Life Skills Handbook provides advice and active learning activities for teaching life skills to young people. It supports and guides all people who plan, manage, teach or work on formal and non-formal education programmes. It can be adapted and used in different cultural contexts worldwide.

More information about the Handbook here.

Evaluating Life Skills Programmes

I am on the hunt at the moment for good evaluation instruments for evaluating life skills. Those of you that know my work and my book know that I use the WHO definition of Life Skills. They are distinct from 'livelihood' and technical skills and include: decision-making, goal setting, problem-solving, coping with stress, coping with emotions, negotiating, friendship, interpersonal relationships, empathy (concern for others), critical thinking, creative thinking, resisting peer pressure, assertiveness!

Although there are many programmes promote life skills work and activities with children and young people I have not been able to find that many good evaluation instruments. Probably the richest source to date have been the Human Service Research Group and they have done some thorough work on developing instruments for skills that include: critical thinking, communication, problem solving, goal setting, leadership and decision making. Have a look at their ranking tools here

I was also quite pleased to find similar type of instruments at the former British government's 'standards site'. These instruments are for use in secondary schools but there are also good ones for using at the primary level. 

A more fun approach to evaluation with young people is detailed in The Evaluators Cookbook and I'll be looking at adapting some of these ideas for the developing country context.

What I also know is that when The Jacobs Foundation have completed this project on Monitoring and Evaluating Life Skills Programmes for Youth Development. It is going to get a very wide readership!

If you know of anything that is working well in your Life Skills programme - please get in touch or share it with me and others on this blog.

Thanks!

FREE offer LIFE SKILLS and MENTORING

Just to let you now that I am now FULLY BOOKED on my mentoring offer. If you missed it then you can still arrange a call to see if my mentoring services would suit you.

Soccer for Peace and LIfe Skills

I am working with the Jacobs Foundation at the moment on a life skills project and I have just come across these Soccer for Peace ideas from Futbol Con Corazon.

Soccer for Peace Methodology

The Soccer for Peace methodology uses soccer as a vehicle to attract children and teenagers to the organization, and provides them with the necessary mentoring and care to have a positive and lasting impact on their lives. With a different set of rules than conventional soccer, the methodology promotes gender equality and teaches conflict resolution.

Rules of the game

• A minimum of two girls and two boys per team.
• Each boy and girl participating in the program must play the same amount of time during the game.
• There are no referees. In their place are advisors (tutors), who act as facilitators. Conflicts that arise during the game must be solved by the players themselves.
• The first goal of each team must be scored by a girl.
• Children are encouraged to follow values, such as honesty, solidarity, respect and tolerance, and receive “Heart” stickers for doing so. They can also collect a “Heart” by scoring a goal during a game.
• The game consists of three periods. During the first period, all players agree to follow the rules of coexistence. During the second period, the game is played. During the third period, players evaluate themselves, as well as their opponents, and the final score is established.
• The advisor facilitates the agreements of coexistence during the first period and the self-evaluation in the third period. The advisor also mediates potential conflicts, and takes notes on the game.
• The winning team accumulates the most number of “Hearts”, which are then converted into points for the tournament’s scoreboard.
• If at the end of the tournaments, there is a draw, the team with the most “Hearts”, as a result of values applied during the game, will be declared the winner.

I'll post this on my other blogs! www.clarehanbury.com and www.youngsolutionsinternational.com

A FREE ONE HOUR MENTORING SESSION limited places BOOK NOW!

I am offering a FREE 121 MENTORING session to the first 6 people who contact me from this lifeskills handbook website. The sessions will need to be booked in advance and take place between next week starting May 17th and July 23rd. The session will be on the phone or via Skype.

The issues you want to discuss may be associated with your life skills programme or they may be unrelated. It is up to you to select the focus for your session.

For more on life skills mentoring and coaching programmes, visit the section on talks, training and mentoring on this site. Here you will also find testimonials from people with whom I have worked.

Contact me at enquiries@lifeskillshandbooks.com or leave me a note on the blog.

Great Life Skills Resources: A Parrot On Your Shoulder

Here is a really good resource to help you with your Life Skills work. A Parrot on Your Shoulder is  designed to use with especially vulnerable children. It has lots of ideas which can be used in any setting and its always a book I pack in my suitcase when I know I'm going to encounter groups of children. Its free. Take a look.  I helped a little with its content and was delighted with the final booklet. Its also available in Hindi and Tamil.

If you went into a crowd of children with a parrot on your shoulder, the parrot would be a great icebreaker and conversation starter...This is a guide for people starting to work with orphans and vulnerable children such as those millions of children affected by HIV/AIDS.

The guide includes 30 activities for engaging children in group work, as well as fun ideas for ice-breakers and energisers, group work and co-operation, observation, active listening and analytical skills, drama, mime and role play, and painting and drawing.

Take a look

Useful Resources on the Educator Sector Response to HIV and AIDS

Developing Booklet 6 on Good Policy and Practice in HIV and AIDS Education: Pre-Service Teacher Education with UNESCO

(An extract adapted from Clare Hanbury's April Newsletter) I have just completed my part in putting together this booklet. The purpose of the series is to present ideas, key findings and programmatic examples on different HIV and AIDS themes and to pull together experiences from different regions. In many countries it is immensely challenging just to provide schools with teachers let alone teachers who have had good enough training to make them effective and efficient teachers in HIV prevention. This made it all the more inspiring to learn how people in resource-poor environments are finding ways to do just this through the production and use of good materials for teachers to use with students and through innovative teacher education programmes. The two most remarkable programmes I came across are both in Southern Africa. One group are producing a high quality teacher educators manual to use with students and which trains the teacher educators too. Another a group are using a combination of face to face workshops, materials, on-line learning and buddy and mentoring system to develop and support teacher educators in the Southern African countries where there is a very high HIV prevalence rate. There is also some great work going on in Papua New Guinea. I will keep you posted on the availability of what will be a free booklet. Here is a link to the rest in the series.

Because of my involvement in this project, I have come across many many documents. Among the best of these is the EDUCAIDS Overviews of Practical Resources. These provide technical staff, programme implementers and mangers in ministries of education and civil society organizations with an analysis of useful published resources on the five essential components of a comprehensive education sector response to HIV and AIDS. Those working on Life Skills work internationally will very often be doing so because of the critical nature to strengthen the eduction response to HIV and AIDS.

Each Overview contains:

    * A resource summary list by component (approximately 20 resources per Overview)

   * Two-page analysis of the included resources and suggested websites for further information

    * Half-page synopsis of each resource, its purpose and content, and how to access

I hope you find this incredibly rich resource as useful as I have!

BUILDING HOPE A new book on life skills and HIV prevention

The book launch for Building Hope by Kate Harrison 

(An extract adapted from Clare Hanbury's April newsletter) I was really pleased to be at the launch of Kate’s book, Building Hope. This is a  practical manual about how HIV and AIDS affects the lives of children and their families and what can be done to help. It is written for community leaders and families and for people who find themselves looking after affected children. The book covers topics such as how to mobilise your community, the importance of health and nutrition, psychological and emotional support and education. It outlines how to challenge the stigma and discrimination that children and extended families may face because of HIV.

Kate Harrison worked at the Aids Alliance for seven years. She joined Comic Relief as HIV coordinator in 2008 and is now their portfolio manager of international grants. You can get more information and copies of the book from TALC (Teaching AIDS at Low Cost).

Life Skills: Planning a Life Skills Lesson or Session

A life skills lesson or session is the  block of time the educator has with the children to conduct a life skills activity or activities. A life skills session may have more than one activity depending on the time available, on the activity chosen and the methods used to conduct the activity.

When selecting an activity the educators must try to build on the content and outcomes of the previous session. Sometimes this might mean selecting an activity that will help to address a specific problem that arose. Educators should note interesting comments made by children and use these to plan other lifeskills work. An educator’s plan for a life skills session may have the following framework. The timings are a guideline only. For example, you may want to spend longer than 5-10 mins on an introductory activity and less time on the main activity.

Here's a sample plan

Re: Haiti..children affected by disaters gain when they are allowed to help.. See http://ping.fm/nNF5t

Social and Emotional Intelligence In Schools: The Evidence Base