Role of Life Skills Based Education (LSBE) in Empowerment of Adolescents in Pakistan

Children and young people are considered the future and face of a society. Children face a number of challenges because of exposure to many new issues and situations in adolescence. . The LSBE has been taught to thousands of students in many areas of Pakistan under projects of different non-governmental organizations. The study was an attempt to explore the role of Life Skills Based Education (LSBE) in developing the capacity of adolescents to feel empowered in taking appropriate decisions in routine daily lives. LSBE is an approach of building capacity of adolescents in the age of puberty to get informed of the issues i.e. communication skills, self-awareness, gender, puberty and body changes, infectious diseases etc. through specially designed curriculums The study will cover the students and teachers of high schools. For the purpose the target population considered was all the students and teachers of five targeted districts (Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, and Karachi) who studied LSBE under the initiative of and INGO Rutgers WPF . The proposed research adopted both the qualitative and quantitative approaches with a focus on qualitative data to get the reliable information. A sample of 1500 students was taken for the collection of pre-test and post-test data. In addition, data was collected from the students and teachers in the form of the stories of Most Significant Change as well as through FGDs with students and the teachers. The results shown a significant positive difference in score of students regarding their knowledge of the basic life skills as well as their self-esteem and confidence as improved in addition to acceptance and understanding of puberty and body changes related issues of adolescents. Furthermore, the acceptance of gender just norms and disapproval of gender based violence and behavior change regarding protection from diseases was also reported. Finally, it was found that life skills based education has a positive impact on overall schools’ environment.