Life Skills Training

World Education is dedicated to improving the lives of the poor through education, and economic and social development programs.

To grow into well-functioning adults, it is critical that youth learn key life skills. Life skills include critical and creative thinking, decision-making, effective communication, as well as skills for developing healthy relationships and a positive self-concepts. Life skills help people make responsible and informed choices and can promote healthy lifestyles as well as career skills. According to WHO, life skills may be defined as “abilities for adaptive and positive behavior, that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life… Every school should enable children and adolescents at all levels to learn critical health and life skills.”

Unfortunately, however, many children do not have access to education that provides such life skills training. World Education works with partners—including ministries of education, schools, and NGOs, to develop life skills curricula and training approaches—to assist programs to more effectively integrate and teach life skills to students in both formal schools and nonformal settings.

In Cambodia, for example, World Education is supporting the National Life Skills Education Policy by developing a teacher training curricula with a three-tiered classification of life skills including general life skills, pre-vocational skills, and career skills. In Nepal, World Education created integrated literacy curricula whereby out-of-school students learned literacy skills using materials that taught them key life skills—from health and cleanliness to avoiding being trafficked—while learning to read.

Featured Projects

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The Comprehensive MRE Project aims to reduce injury and death from UXO by informing children about how to protect themselves and their peers. The project reaches young people through the formal curriculum and through community puppetry performances.

USAID Okard (2017-2022)

USAID Okard works to improve and sustain the independent living and functional ability of persons with disabilities, regardless of factors such as age, sex, gender expression, ethnic origin, cause of impairment, or indigenous status in Lao PDR.

Youth and Technology

Capitalizing on the movement to improve access to education and skill building opportunities for Myanmar youth, World Education is providing non-formal education opportunities for out-of-school youth.