Executive summary

Students today are surrounded by a variety of factors that can lead to unhealthy life choices, such as smoking, substance abuse, and violence. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are doubly vulnerable. Adolescent stages for children are highly vulnerable as children engage in a great deal of personal and interpersonal exploration to understand themselves and their social world. Parallelly, many physical, behavioral, and cognitive changes occur in the teenage years. It is common for children to get into risk-taking behavior.

Teaching children directly about self-management on the impact of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs often did not reap the expected results on healthy child development. However, evidence indicates that training children on critical life skills in a healthy and non-threatening environment will help children to choose healthy alternatives and avoid risk-taking behavior. Training enables children to  

• develop greater self-esteem, self-mastery, and self-confidence
• effectively cope with social anxiety
• resist peer pressures to smoke, drink, use drugs, and indulge in violence
•  enhance cognitive and behavioral competency to reduce and prevent risk-taking behavior

Given the advantages, the project proposes training children in critical life skills and social and gender norms and enabling children to thrive.

The project proposes imparting life skills to children through high-impact videos in Telugu. Instructive and informative videos impact psychosocial competence to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life and address gender norms and attitudes before they become deeply ingrained in children and youth. And imparting in local languages will have a high impact as it would be easy for children to comprehend and develop sound judgment and good habits for long-term stability, wellness, and success.

This project would be executed in 100 government high schools, reaching out to 50000 boys and girls in Hyderabad, Telangana. Permission from the education department would be acquired to cover 100 schools and teachers from the selected schools, and they would be trained in using the videos. Further, share the videos with the government schools to use during regular classes. The schools would be encouraged to download the videos and stream live during the school assembly and class-wise during the designated time for moral lessons. The impact would be measured by comparing baseline and endline data.

Need for the Project

Teaching and learning life skills are essential for empowering children to succeed in education and personal goals. While significant progress has been made to increase access to education, there is a mismatch between what is learned in school and the skills needed to engage productively and meaningfully in society.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposed to incorporate life skills education (LSE) in mainstream education by 2022 across all schools in India. However, not much progress has been made. Some challenges to incorporating LSE in mainstream schools are failing to recognize its value and influence on children, imparting approaches, and pressure to complete syllabi.

While elite schools incorporate life skills through school-based training and videos, government and private budget schools cannot progress due to a lack of financial and technical resources. And even if some schools have explored opportunities to impart life skills through existing online resources and videos, the majority are in English, further depriving children who have difficulty understanding English. Evidence indicates that English has certain innate challenges that create difficulties in the quick understanding of children.

Hence, training children on life skills in their native language can help them acquire important core skills to thrive in life more effectively. Teaching life skills in local languages can foster a positive learning environment, improving children’s self-esteem thereby increasing student participation and desired outcomes.

Aim of the project:

To improve the psychosocial competence of children to address day-to-day challenges through school-based life skills education (LSE)

Objectives of the project:

1. To impart life skills to 20000 children in 100 government schools in Hyderabad through high-impact videos in Telugu
2. To equip 500 teachers from 100 government high schools operating for boys and girls in Hyderabad on the usage of LSE videos
3. To advocate the model for scaling up at the state-level consultation, knowledge sharing, and dissemination.

Project Strategy:

This project would develop five high-impact impact videos created in Telugu and imparted to children. This project would be executed in 100 government high schools, reaching out to 20000 boys and girls in Hyderabad, Telangana. City-level consultations will be held with the education department to enable schools to understand the usage of videos in the classrooms. Permission from the education department would be acquired, and teachers from the selected schools would be trained in using the videos. Further, share the videos with the government and private schools during regular classes. The schools would be encouraged to download the videos and stream live during the school assembly and class-wise during the designated time for moral lessons.

• to effectively deal with daily challenges at home, school, and community
• to develop positive behavior and enable children to reduce risk-taking attitudes and handle peer pressure
• to self-discipline, control over emotions, and refrain from violent behavior
• to make the right decision at the right time and the right place
• to build social skills and respect for their peers

Project impact would be evaluated and measured both through qualitative and quantitative data.

1. To create high-impact videos in local languages, offering life skills education to government and budget school students in Telangana.
2. Facilitating schools to download the videos and stream live during the school assembly and class-wise during the designated time for moral lessons.
3. Equip children to develop sound judgment and good habits for long-term stability, wellness, and success and shape them future-ready.

Sankalp is a registered NGO working to promote girl child education and senior care since 2007. Sankalp has extended scholarship support to more than 3000 socially and economically vulnerable girl students from 7 schools in neighborhoods in Hyderabad and 100 students who lost parents to COVID-19.  Annually provide children with school kits. Through its flagship program, PANTS, Sankalp is already working on school-based prevention of child sexual abuse programs and has reached out to more than 60 government and private schools in Hyderabad and trained more than 50000 stakeholders through physical sessions. With the rise of violence against children during the lockdown, we have virtually conducted CSA and life skills education sessions for stakeholders. Sankalp also takes up need-based humanitarian initiatives such as emergency relief services.