9 - Introduction to 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:

Untangle
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 Communication

- 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