Life skills for a healthy life: Tool for sustainable human development

Since 1993, WHO and other UN agencies have promoted Life Skills training as a means to strengthen human psychosocial competencies, to improve the quality of life and to better cope with everyday challenges in a everchanging world, as a basic element for survival.

Life Skills training attends to the development of social and interpersonal skills, as well as to cognitive and personal skills that are necessary for human development. It uses active and participative learning methods and Health Promotion strategies , such as debates, situation análisis, conflict resolution, problem solving, psychodrama, imagery, etc., which are based on Learning Theories, including Moral Development (Newman & Newman, 1998; Kolberg 1976); Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977); Problematic Behavior Theory (Jessor, Donovan & Costa 1991), Social Influence Theory (Hansen, 1992); Multiple Intelligence, Social Intelligence (Gardner, 1993); among others. Fe y Alegría-Bogota, Colombia, since 1999 has been developing pertinent materials for Life Skills training, as a way to contribute to the implementation of the Initiative in Latin America and has carried out multiple training workshops worldwide.

In Chile, in 2007 the Universidad de Los Lagos in Puerto Montt carried out a Life Skills Training Workshop for the Southern Cone of the American Region, with 50 participants from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, and Chile. In Aranjuez, Spain, in July 2008 the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos carried out a Life Skills Training Workshop as part of their Summer Courses. This workshop was atended by 30 professionals from academia that are working with the implementation of Health-Promoting Universities in several regions of Spain. This Workshop will also expected to be carried out in 2009.

This presentation will describe the scientific bases of Life Skills training as a vital component for the development of Health-Promoting Universities/Healthy Universities, as well as the experience with the training workshops carried out in Puerto Montt, Chile and Aranjuez, Spain.