Event recap: Global Partnerships for Life Skills Education conference

Event recap: Global Partnerships for Life Skills Education conference

A Day of Learning, Listening, and Life Skills

On June 12th, 2025, the Department of Education and Pedagogy and UGlobe, working within the DoY community, Youth Education & Life Skills (YELS), hosted a conference to strengthen ties between Utrecht University (UU) and partners from the Global South. The event aimed to launch the ALiVE network (Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa) and lay the groundwork for future collaboration. The event focused primarily on international research development, life skills education and the process of decolonisation in future international collaborations.

The first keynote of the day was focused on Collaboration in System Transitions by John Mugo, executive director of Zizi Afrique. John explained that initially, things start as a "disconnected island of excellence, no unified voice or collective agency". ALiVE is a mixture of :

1. Knowledge Hub 2. Policy Influence 3. Transformed members

The idea behind it is that collaboration works through different channels :

1. Peer Learning → among organisations, thematic groups and across countries
2. Special Interest Groups and collaboration projects.

So far, several key milestones have been achieved, including the acquisition of agency and voice by local organisations, the transformational growth of small African organisations, access to a supportive funding community, and mutual learning among over 60 participating organisation members. All of this is achieved by following a certain rationale when collaborating with others :

1. POWER 2. VOICE 3. SUSTAINABILITY 4. CAPACITY

ALiVE's 4 pillars consist of

1. Curriculum - embedding life skills, evidence on skills, strengthening tools/frameworks
2. Teacher Training education - developing and testing pedagogical models
3. National Assessment institutions - developing and testing tools for life skills
4. National Parents initiatives- shifting parenting practices

The keynote concluded with final remarks on the challenges of building trust, emphasising that they have successfully collaborated with individuals who share power and mutual respect, while ensuring that transparency and loyalty remain central values.

The second keynote, "Perspectives on Life Skills Education" by Maria de Haan and JacklineNyere was a reflection on how we can learn from best practices while simultaneously taking into account the differences between cultures and social, economic, and environmental embedded phenomena. A definition of "life skills education" (LSE) was provided in the beginning :

" Education that provides all learners with the capabilities they require to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual well-being"

Teaching in recent decades is often seen as too direct, while parenting tends to be overly protective. This equation results in children no longer learning naturally or using their intuition. As a result, motivation drops, and they're boxed into a school system that often ignores real-life applications. One example that really resonated with me was mathematics-after years of studying it, many children still can't apply it to something as practical as managing their own finances. That is where life skills come along, they can take various forms such as listening skills, conflict resolution, empathy, responsibility, sense of honour, depersonalisation and clean communication. This framework falls under the SDG4-" ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all". This sustainable goal aims to develop and implement effective approaches for nurturing life skills and values in children by equipping actors such as teachers and parents.

At the end of the day, after a panel discussion, there were four workshops which covered various topics from NGO Strategies for LSE, to navigating decolonisation in international research, monitoring, evaluation of research and contextualising learning models. The first workshop I went to was monitored by Tomohisa Miyamoto and Tjitske de Groot, who showed us what the best practices and approaches can look like through different actors who presented their programs and how they are contributing in their own way to LSE awareness.

1. Secure Future - programme for pregnant adolescent girls and young mothers in Nairobi
2. Edukans - for a better quality of life, and youth unemployment challenges
3. Youth economic empowerment - for children's rights and equality
4. Whats'up children - on relationships, staying safe, stress and solving conflicts

The last workshop I followed was the one moderated by David Alelah and Mauro Giacomazzi, which followed an interactive way of exploring "learning" as a social, cultural and institutional process. In this workshop, participants were divided into three groups to reflect on four different life skills :

1. Problem-solving
2. Collaboration
3. Respect
4. Self-awareness

My groupmates and I focused on the last topic and created a mind map of different ideas related to the word "Self-awareness." We started by thinking about how, in Greek, "αυτογνωσία" means self-knowledge-knowing yourself and your own limits. From there, we branched out into how being self-aware also involves understanding how to behave in social situations. Later in our discussion, we talked about how adolescence is the peak moment when teenagers become the most self-aware, and how this awareness begins the moment you start to understand others around you and your position in relation to them.

After one last keynote on Research as a Catalyst for Change by Joost de Laat, highlighting how research plays a vital role in driving change in education, the event concluded with some afterdrinks, offering a chance to reflect, connect, and wrap up an inspiring day.

Read more about the event here:

https://www.uu.nl/en/events/global-partnerships-for-life-skills-education-conference