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Introduction to Life Skills


	Gifts for Peace helps young people to engage with other Scouts to make a difference in their communities. To do this successfully they need to learn more about themselves and how they interact with others – they need to develop 'life-skills'. Life-skills have been defined by the World Health Organisation as 'abilities for adaptive and positive behaviours that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life' (WHO 1993). The information on Life Skills in this resource comes from a publication produced by Save the Children and the Scouts Association of Bhutan. In addition to the activities to develop life skills in young people, others activities have been designed for adults from each of the 10 core life-skills: Life skills for adults (click here) This resource for young people focuses on the 10 core life-skills: 1.Self-awareness - includes recognition of ourselves, of our character, of our strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. The activities to explore self-awareness are: The Wonderful Layers in Me An Empty Chair on my Right My Life Graph If I were ... I'd be ... 2. Coping with emotions - involves recognising our emotions and those of others, being aware of how emotions influence behaviour and being able to respond to emotions appropriately. The activities to explore emotions are: Home, Street, Child My Emotional Worksheet What would I do if..? 3. Coping with stress - is about first recognising our life stressors and the sources of these in our lives, then we can choose to act in a way that controls our stress levels. The activities to explore stress are: Accept, Ignore, Reject The Stress Tree The Stressor Matrix 4.Empathy - is the ability to imagine what life is like for another person, even in a situation that you may not be familiar with. The activities to explore empathy are: Mirror Exercise Emotion Relay If the Shoe Fits 5.Decision-making - is about following through constructively with decisions about our lives. The activities to explore decision-making are: My 24 Hour Life The Decision Making Steps My Decision-Making Journal 6.Problem-solving - like 'decision-making', this helps us to deal constructively with the problems in our lives. The activities to explore problem-solving are: Dr Quack Conflicts The Problem-Solving Approach 7. Creative thinking - contributes to both decision-making and problem-solving by enabling us to explore alternatives and the consequences of our action or non-action. The activities to explore creative thinking are: Stick and Cloth Build me a House Thinking Creatively 8. Critical thinking - is the ability to analyse information and experiences in an objective manner. The activities to explore critical thinking are: The Never Ending Why? Hmm ... Maybe ... But ... Debate 9. Effective Communicaiton - means that we are able to express ourselves verbally and non-verbally, in ways that are appropriate to our cultures and situations. The activities to explore effective communications are: Number Morse Code The Real Story The Communication Process 10. Interpersonal relationship skills - help us to relate in positive ways with people that we interact with. The activities to explore interpersonal relationships are: The Buyer, the Seller and the Goods People Around Me What the Situation Calls for.. The activities are arranged according to the level of difficulty and the complexity of the issues. There is also a section which contains activities so that can explore the topics before running activities for young people. The activities are not divided into activities for different age-groups, so leaders will need to judge which activities are suitable for the age-group that they are working with or amend them to suit the age-group. Please remember that these activities are not prescriptive but suggested activities. The appeal or interest of these activities to Scouts will vary according to their age, gender or learning abilities. The format of each activity is as follows: Aim of the Game - describes what the activity is about Learning Objectives - a list of behaviours that you want to develop in the participants Structure - the way learners are arranged and prepared Time - the time to allocate to an activity, from beginning to end Materials - the materials that you need to run the activity Method - a step by step description of the activity Evaluation - questions that guide the learning process "Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions." Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate