BERT Life Skills

1. Batang
Empowered and
Resilient
Team
Facilitation Skills Training for
Save the Children staff

2. Life Skills
Life skills are broadly described as a set of
capabilities, actions and behaviours that are
closely integrated with the fulfilment of child’s
rights. Life skills have been defined as
“abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour
that enable individuals to deal effectively with
the demands and challenges of everyday life”
(WHO, 1993).

3. Life Skills from an Educator’s Point of View
 Life Skills Education can be viewed as the
systematic teaching-and learning process of
acquiring “skills” that help an individual positively
tackle everyday life and both the opportunities and
challenges that come with it.
 At the heart of life skills education is the learning of life skills.
 To enable children to learn and practice skills, life skills education is based
on a child-centred and activity oriented methodology.
 Life skills education is based on the philosophy that young people should
be empowered to take more responsibility for their actions.

4. What skills do you think you have and use
to tackle the everyday challenges of life as
a person?
 As an Area Coordinator?
 As a Project Officer?
 As a Community Mobilizer?

5. The Ten Core Life Skills
 Self Awareness
 Coping with Emotions
 Coping with Stress
 Empathy
 Decision-Making
 Problem Solving
 Creative Thinking
 Critical Thinking
 Effective Communication
 Interpersonal Relationship Skills

6. Self Awareness
 includes our recognition of ourselves, of our
character, of our strengths and weaknesses,
desires and dislikes. Developing self-awareness
can help us recognise when we are stressed or
feel under pressure. It is also often a prerequisite
for effective communication and interpersonal
relation, as well as for developing empathy for
others. This stems from the most difficult
question to ask of one’s self: WHO AM I?

7. Coping with emotions
 involves recognising our own emotions and those
of the others; being aware of how emotions
influence behaviour and being able to respond to
emotions appropriately. Intense emotions like
anger or sorrow can have negative effects on our
well being if we do not react appropriately.
Conversely, happiness and excitement may also
have direct effects on our well-being. This can
emanate from the questions: How do I feel? What
do I feel?

8. Coping with Stress
 is about first recognising our life stressors and the
sources they come from. Recognising this stress
affects us, as we act in ways that help to control
our levels of stress. This may mean that we take
action to reduce the sources of stress, for
example by making changes in our physical
environment or lifestyle. Or it may mean learning
how to relax, so that tensions created by
unavoidable stress do not give rise to life threats.

9. Empathy
is the ability to imagine what life
is like for another person, even in
a situation that we may not be
familiar with.

10. Decision-Making
 is about going constructively through with
decisions about our lives. Decisions we
make can have great consequences, in both
the long, medium and short terms.
Assessing different options and
consequences affect different decisions.

11. Problem Solving
 like decision making enables us to deal
constructively with problems in our lives.
Significant problems that are left
unresolved can cause mental stress and
give rise to accompanying physical,
emotional, social and even spiritual strains.

12. Creative thinking
 contributes to both decision making and problem
solving by enabling us to explore the available
alternatives and various consequences or our
actions or non-action. It helps us to look beyond
our direct experience, and even if no problem is
identified, or no decision is made, creative
thinking can help us to respond adaptively and
with flexibility to the situations of our daily lives.

13. Critical Thinking
 is an ability to analyse information and
experiences in an objective manner.
Critical thinking can contribute to positive
living by helping us to recognise and assess
the factors that influence attitudes and
behaviour, such as values, peer pressure
and the media.

14. Effective communication
 means that we are able to express ourselves both
verbally and non-verbally, in ways that are
appropriate to our cultures and situations. This means
being able to express opinions and desires, but also
needs and fears. This begins with the reflection
question: “What is it that I want / need to convey?
And why?” It manifests with the question: “In what
ways can I express what I want to convey? And ends
with: “What results do I see as a result of conveying
this?”

15. Interpersonal relationship skills
 help us to relate in positive ways with people
we interact with. This may mean being able to
make and keep friendly relationships, which
can be of great importance to our mental and
social well-being. It may mean keeping good
relationship with family members, which are
an important source of social support. It may
also mean being able to end relationships
constructively.