After continuous sessions that lasted for two months, during which 56 adolescents from the village of Atman in Daraa countryside got ideas that would help them be more effective in their communities through the life skills program they learned, the adolescents worked under the supervision of Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers to implement an initiative entitled "Together against Coronavirus". This initiative was aimed to contribute in protecting their classmates from the risk of infection with the emerging corona virus.
An initiative with multiple activities to prevent Coronavirus
When they finished attending the life skills program sessions, the adolescents proposed an initiative to prevent COVID-19, so they work with the volunteers in two schools in Atman village to accomplished it. This initiative included the following various activities:
– Disinfecting two schools in Atman village.
– Posting brochures that contain ways to prevent COVID-19 and how to wash hands proprly.
– Making cloth masks for the adolescents school students.
– Distributing masks to students.
– Instructing their schoolmates on the necessity of washing hands, washing the masks and disinfect them periodically.
What is the Basic Life Skills for Youth program and what does it include?
It is a program that targets the age groups between 10-24 by providing 9 sessions for two months, with the aim of enabling youth to explore their own strengths and potential energies, and thus make themselves more vital and responsible in their societies and help them face the challenges they may go through.
The life skills program includes the following topics:
1- Self-knowledge: This includes helping youth realize the importance of self-knowledge and providing youth with self-communication skills.
2- The art of critical and creative thinking: training youth the skill of questioning and thinking about what is presented to them of ideas, seeking to stimulate thinking among youth to devise a creative solution to a practical problem.
3- Problem Solving: introducing youth to the concept of the problem and helping them to become able to analyze the problem and choose appropriate solutions for them.
4- Decision-making: The youth get acquainted with the concept of decision, its importance and the steps for making it, in addition to the youth’s exercise of the skill of studying possible alternatives and the available possibilities.
5- Healthy lifestyles: It includes talking about the importance of caring for body hygiene and providing youth with the skill of preparing a balanced diet and the importance of avoiding harmful food habits, while introducing young people to the importance and foundations of healthy sleep and ways to deal with the Insomnia.
6- Me and My Environment: This theme seeks to create a deeper understanding of the environment and a sense of responsibility towards it.
7- Expression and Communication: This includes identifying the concept of communication, its components, and the characteristics of the effective and ineffective communication process, in addition to providing the trained participants with effective communication skills.
8- Dealing with difference: This topic introduces youth to the characteristics that they share with members of society and the qualities that they distinguish from them, while guiding them to realize the importance of diversity in life.
9- Working as a team: This topic includes the expression of youth that they are part of a team in daily life, and the promotion of positive ways of dealing with the spirit of the team that they are part of, in addition to enhancing respect in dealing with others.
