LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION TOOLKIT FOR ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN IN INDIA• 13
How a participatory approach helps
Life Skills learning:
Lessons from child-to-child programs
The Life Skills Education Program promotes
children’s rights and values their perspectives.
These are the foundations upon which the Life Skills
Education Program is built. Life skills respect the
contribution of young people and views them as
partners in the change process.
The participation of young people is critical to
Life Skills Education Programs. Young people are
most likely to participate if active learning
methods are used to promote participation.
Child-to-Child^9 is an approach to active
learning that has been used worldwide for
various health issues. Its six-step approach lends
itself ideally for life skills learning as the
approach promotes thinking, doing and working
with others. This Life skills education toolkit
uses the Child-to-Child approach.^10
The approach draws on the experiences of the
child. In the first step, the child/young person is
encouraged to recognize and understand his/her
priority problems and needs. Once the problems
(^9) The Child-to-Child Program was initiated in the International Year of the Child in 1977; see http://www.child-to-child.org
(^10) Also see Section Two in the Facilitator’s Guide: Approaches to Active Learning, pg. 56, for more details.
(^11) See Boyden, J. Ling, and Myers, W. What Works for Working Children, Sweden, Save the Children Sweden and UNICEF,
1998, Pg 30.
The six steps of the approach are as follows:
1 Understanding the issues and life skills needed;
2 Relating issues to their own lives;
3 Practicing skills in a safe and supportive environment;
4 Applying life skills in real-life situations;
5 Thinking about experiences gained; and
6 Strengthening life skills for further use.
are understood, the young people discuss what
they have learned so as to link learning with their
day-to-day lives from the outset. Next, children
work together to make plans and take action.
Working with other children in teams and as peer
educators is central to the Child-to-Child
approach. Children like to work together and by
doing so, learn to share and care. In many cultures,
group rights and influences are also more
acceptable than individual ones.^11 In Steps 5 and 6,
children and young people learn to review and
learn from their experiences so that they can be
more effective the next time. Each of these steps
links what they learn in the “learning place” to what
is happening in their outside lives. The activities and
sessions in the Toolkit are designed to mirror this
approach. Linking Learning to Life is an integral
part of each activity, and the Group Check In at the
beginning of the activity helps children to think
about and review how well they have been able to
practice the new behavior learned in earlier sessions.