Life Skills for Children and Young People

Children and young people, from pre-school age to late teens, receive lessons giving guidance and advice. In the children's early years it is under the banner of 'Personal, Social and Emotional Development'. Subsequently, when older, the young people have lessons under the broader title of 'Personal, Social and Health Education with Citizenship'.

Lions use the simpler title 'Life Skills' for this work. We give support to local schools plus their children, young people and parents to enable them to study the government's curriculum.

Its content progressively builds and broadens as follows:

For this, Lions in the UK have since the 1980s worked in partnership with Tacade, a not-for-profit publisher of Life Skills materials with training services. Harpenden Lions was concerned that this area of the curriculum had 'Cinderella status', being under-funded and under-resourced. For over 15 years Harpenden Lions has joined with Herts LEA advisers and local teachers to identify and match their unmet Life Skills needs and priorities.

To date we have raised over £100,000 from donors near and far, and from local people through our annual Easter Egg raffle. This has provided Tacade and other teaching materials, expert advice and training for teachers, theatre group visits to schools, etc. Our annual budget now exceeds £10,000 pa.

We cover all state schools in our area and 2 independents - 28 in all - with pupils totaling 8,300:

• 12 primary schools in Harpenden and 7 in local villages, plus St Hildas.
• Our 3 secondary schools.
• Batford Nursery school plus Harpenden Pre School.
• St Lukes and Watling View special schools, and the Links Support Centre.

As and when funds allow we provide Life Skills basic materials to deserving schools elsewhere across Hertfordshire: more than 140 primary and 10 secondary ones to date. In 1997 we met an urgent request during a drug education drive by joining with 12 other Lions Clubs to fund and deliver 120 basic Life Skills packs.

In 2003 we drew on this experience to lead eight other clubs in a special project for 3-5 year olds covering the whole of Herts plus Luton and Dunstable. In the first phase £25,000 was raised, over £10,000 by Lions' own fundraising, and the balance from the generosity of five local partner donors, notably Harpenden Building Society.

480 schools and preschool groups have received the groundbreaking teachers' pack "Little Steps". Each has been trained for this by Tacade and their own local Early Years Advisers.  There were sixteen training sessions between September 2004 and February 2005, with a further eight since then.

Overall some 25,000 children will each year benefit from this project.  Hertfordshire local education authority are now extending the programme to a further 150 groups using government funds.

For those interested in Tacade go to www.tacade.com

For information about Lions Life Skills work in South East England email lifeskills@lions105a.org.uk

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