Building life skills/soft skills/21st century skills at scale and sustainably in LMICs

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Soft skills/21st Century skills/life skills or Socio Emotional Skills (SEL) have been increasingly recognized as key skills for children and youth to achieve their full potential. While each of these terms has a slightly different definition, they broadly refer to a set of skills, behaviors, and personal qualities that enable people to work collaboratively with others, communicate effectively, and navigate their environment. These skills are widely applicable across sectors, complement the acquisition of technical, vocational, and academic skills, and have also been proven to be essential for the acquisition of these skills. Soft skills are particularly important for sustainability because they not only impact youth’s ability to find jobs, but also impact their ability to lead a healthy life, contribute to peacebuilding, and become active citizens.
Despite considerable progress made in understanding the importance of soft skills for positive youth development (PYD) and gathering evidence, challenges remain to making soft skills programs sustainable, reliably measuring these skills and interpreting the results.
Chaired by a representative from the InterAmerican Development Bank, and starting with the results from the USAID-funded YouthPower Learning program, including implementation and evaluation project examples from Mexico, India, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and several other countries in Asia, this panel will explore what we know about the importance of soft skills for different long-term, sustainable impacts on youth, how national systems adopt and adapt soft skills curricula, and what it takes to measure in and compare results from countries with different languages and contexts. Speakers of this session will include successful (local) youth engagement, where relevant.
Building on research carried out under the USAID funded YouthPower Learning project and other studies, this panel will start by presenting results from a YouthPower Learning systematic review on positive youth development and the role of soft skills in (PYD).
The International Youth Foundation (IYF) will share the challenges and learnings from integrating its soft skills curriculum into a TVET program in Mexico.
Room to Read will highlight the importance of girls education in social skills for inclusive social and economic development. They will present their experiences of measuring soft skills, based on results from a large baseline study in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The speaker will present the challenges they faced in applying soft skills measurement tools and interpreting the results across countries and will share how they have overcome these challenges.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Youth Development and Education

Chair

• Elena Heredero Rodriquez, InterAmerican Development Bank

Individual Presentations

• 1. Soft Skills within the Context of Positive Youth Development, and their Importance for Sustainability - Maria Brindlmayer, Making Cents International

• Sustainably integrating soft skills into a TVET high school system in Mexico - Elizabeth Vance, International Youth Foundation

• Study on the IADB’s multi-country New Employment Opportunities (NEO) initiative for the development of socio-emotional skills with vulnerable young people - Elena Heredero Rodriquez, InterAmerican Development Bank

• 3. How do we measure life skills for successful scaling? – Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia - Ryan Hebert, Room to Read