Life Skills & Leadership Manual | Page 2 of 11(^)
Using the Manual
The following sections should help you determine if the youth with whom you work can benefit from
the training sessions in this manual. All training sessions need to be reviewed for appropriateness and
modified as necessary. There are abundant and detailed notes within the sessions to help you do that.
Target Audience and Prerequisites
The audience for the course includes youth and young adults (primarily from the ages of 12 to 18 ) who
have little to no formal training in specific life skills. While all youth learn some life skills in the course of
growing up in their cultural context, this course is meant to be a resource for Volunteers seeking to be
intentional and explicit about life skills development in their work as mentors to youth in their
communities.
Other assumptions about the target audience include the following:
The youth are able to read and write in local language at least at the sixth-grade level. All the
sessions are written in English. Facilitators will need to translate key information and directions,
or have co-facilitators who can do so.
The youth are members of a community with whom the Volunteer has already begun to develop
trusting relationships, and expects to sustain those relationships for the duration of the training
course, or for the duration of the Volunteer’s tour of service.
Length of Training
There are approximately 45 hours of instruction in this manual. The sessions are divided into the
following units:
Unit 1: Personal Development ( 13 hours, 45 minutes)
Unit 2: Interpersonal Development ( 13 hours, 30 minutes)
Unit 3: Goal Setting and Action Planning ( 8 hours)
Unit 4: Teamwork and Leadership ( 10 hours)
Depending on the audience, facilitators may choose to moderate the pace by allowing extra time for
some sessions. Many sessions include facilitator notes to indicate when it might be appropriate to break
a session, completing it in a subsequent session, in order to allow more time for participants to practice
or apply key concepts and skills.
While learning objectives state specific standards, mastery of concepts and skills is not expected. Based
on observations and feedback from the participants, the facilitators might choose to re-visit some
session activities and practice some of the concepts at a later time, in order to reinforce continued
learning and skills development.
The sessions are designed to be conducted in the sequence provided in the manual. Key concepts and
skills are introduced in one session and subsequent sessions build incrementally on those activities,