Life Skills Collaborative Launches India’s First Life Skills Glossary
Bangalore: The Life Skills Collaborative (LSC) today launched the India Life Skills Glossary, a comprehensive repository of life skills, created and contextualised to the needs of India’s young people and education system. The comprehensive glossary defines and explains 51 life skills that can help our children develop necessary personal capabilities to fulfil their human potential while also adapting to an ever-changing world. The India Glossary is designed with the aim to provide students, learning ecosystems, and parents with a common vocabulary to better understand and adopt life skills.
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LSC Glossary
The India Life Skills Glossary has been created through a unique, multi-step process to build holistic and relevant life skill definitions specifically for India. While designing the glossary, inclusivity, aspects of employability, future-readiness, and student wellbeing were given due consideration. The India Glossary will be open for feedback and comments from the general public till February 28, 2022. Through inviting feedback and suggestions, the Life Skills Collaborative hopes to strengthen the India Glossary – contextually and structurally. The India Glossary is accessible to all through the LSC website (www.
Speaking about the launch, Maya Menon, Founder Director, The Teacher Foundation says, “The India Life Skills Glossary is a big step towards strengthening the imparting of life skills education in India. It will be an invaluable resource for departments of education, school teachers and NGO partners, equipping them with accurate and accessible information on vital skills and how they are manifested in young people. We would like the glossary to be the ‘lighthouse’ steering India’s youth through life’s stormy seas, into safe harbours.”
The India Glossary provides the backbone for LSC’s work in the life skills ecosystem. It articulates 51 life skills that are considered important for Indian young people between the ages of 11 and 18 years. Besides offering a well-researched list, LSC’s India Glossary goes beyond mere introductions. It dives deeper into each life skill, examining it for its relevance, application, and other allied phrases. Each life skill is explained using the following structure:
- Definition: Explanation of the life skill (key elements of the life skill) + importance/usefulness of the skill.
- Life Skill in Action: How the life skill is manifested in a young person
- Related Life Skills: Skills that either bears a close affinity to the skill being defined or are essential components of the skill, and support the development and functioning of the skill being defined
- Also Known As: The term used for the specific life skill in other regional languages in India
Speaking about the launch, Arjun Bahadur, Lead, Life Skills Collaborative, says, “The LSC is focused on contributing towards transforming learning ecosystems to empower children and facilitate them to thrive. The India Life Skills Glossary is a key step forward in that direction and is a visionary and a futuristic tool that will enable all stakeholders of the learning ecosystem to speak the same language when it comes to life skills. I am excited to see the usage and application of this extensive repository of life skills by our young minds to soar high. The India Life Skills Glossary is a living document and I invite stakeholders to contribute to it as we continue to build more contextual inputs into it.”
Life skills are vital processes that help a person navigate through familiar, unfamiliar, and challenging contexts with a sense of personal confidence, social conscience, and professional competence. The India Glossary will provide a contextual platform to understand life skills and offer a common vocabulary to put the spotlight on life skills for India’s young people so they can thrive and succeed.
An extensive review of 63 SEL, life skills, and 21st-century skills frameworks, globally covering 7 regions was conducted with a special focus on work done in and on India. Out of the 63 frameworks, 26 were chosen considering their focus on the Indian landscape and shared with the EASEL Labs of Harvard School of Education for mapping. Parallelly, the team sought insights from 50 national and international experts on the relevance of life skills for young people.
Dr. Shekhar Seshadri, Professor & Head of Dept. of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore says, “COVID is going to completely change our psyche in an evolutionary sense. Life Skills are more critical now than ever before. The development of an India Glossary of Life Skills is a vital step, because context matters! These are not a set of generic skills that can be taught devoid of context. We also need to look at the place of life skills education in the context of repurposing education in alignment with NEP 2020’s principles of learning how to learn.”