Our New Life Skills Club

On Saturday morning, the girls that I took to the AGE Summit and I started a life skills club at our school. The girls learned so much at the summit and are now ready to share their knowledge with their fellow students. We also received GAD (Gender and Development) manuals at the summit so we are using this as a guide for our club. I met with Itsubdink and Habtamnesh (my two participants from the summit) this week to discuss the logistics for our club. Since they know their classmates best, they chose the students to invite to our club. We decided it would be best to have both boys and girls participate and to meet in my classroom. The purpose of our club is to give the students the skills they need to become successful. That means we are going to be teaching them about leadership, personal health, and making good decisions, all while promoting English language and gender equality.

For our first session we did an activity called "Life Tree." This is a personal growth activity that aims to introduce participants to the importance of goal setting in their lives and the significance of personal values in achieving goals. By creating specific life goals participants will be motivated to take the steps towards a successful and rewarding life (GAD Manual). We first had the students imagine their lives in 10 years. We asked them what they saw? What were they doing? Where they were? Who they were with? Next, all the students were handed colored sheets of paper where they drew their own tree. The roots represented their foundation and the skills they have now. In the tree and the leaves they had to write their future goals. On the left side the students were to draw clouds to represent tangible resources they would need to accomplish their goals while on the right side they were to draw a lightning bolt signifying any potential threats they might encounter in reaching their goals. I love doing introspective activities like this and really enjoyed watching the kids tap into their creative sides. Students aren't often given the opportunity to express themselves and their ideas. It was nice doing an activity where they focused only on themselves and where they want their life to go.

I'm most proud of Itsubdink and Habtamnesh. It was wonderful watching them really take charge of this lesson. They were translating everything that I was saying and during the activity they walked around and helped all of the students. It's amazing to see them sharing the knowledge and skills they learned at the summit by leading these lessons. Our first session was a great success. I can't wait to see what next week brings!