Today I’ve been reading about the Zizi Afrique Foundation’s Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE). The program focuses on:
“the need for strengthening the integration and development of 21st Century skills, and commenced work around this. More than 20 Civil Society Organizations have committed to collaborate in deepening understanding of members on values and life skills, experimenting with what works in nurturing and developing values and life skills, and developing context-relevant assessments to measure progress, share learnings and inform system change across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In the first round assessments, ALiVE will focus on 4 competencies; Problem solving, Self-Awareness, Collaboration and Respect.” (Read more at https://lnkd.in/gQsYi2dN)
I’m wondering if strengthening indigenous Life Skills might contribute more to improving the immediate quality of life for extremely poor people than “21st century skills”.
Why take this approach? To benefit right away from most vocational, entrepreneurial, and digital technology-based skills, there must be a developed infrastructure that includes water, power, transportation, and telecommunications as well as an economy that offers paid employment. The lack of this infrastructure is the very definition of “underdevelopment” and improvement usually takes decades. By contrast, human beings have lived happy, healthy, often peaceful lives for millennia by passing on knowledge of how to thrive with only locally found materials and indigenous know-how.
Ancient or indigenous lifestyles and techniques are called “primitive” by people who can only see value in the new, modern, or flashy. However, indigenous techniques can be taught quickly, make use of low or no-cost resources, do not destroy the planet, and can be implemented without waiting for infrastructure development.
Don’t indigenous, low technology skills deserve to be included as “Life Skills in programs like ALiVE and the UN Sustainable Development Goal #4 on Education just as much as highly publicized “21 Century Skills”?
Find more discussion on this and other issues of alternative and expanded education at:
https://lnkd.in/g_aCAyVc