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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: G41-02. To panel G41.

Title of paper:

Authors:

Aniek Santema (Edukans);

Maryama Ismail (Edukans).

Short abstract paper:
This paper seeks to analyze the role of life skills education and its impact on the employment of youth, with a case study in Ethiopia. We show how contextualization has the potential to tackle the contradiction of political motives in programming and enable positive liberty of young people.

Long abstract paper:
This paper seeks to analyze the role of life skills education and its impact on the employment of youth. Researchers and practitioners agree that life skills education is an effective way to fight youth unemployment, but not enough is known about the working elements of life skills programs. We will analyze the topic by exploring practical experiences with life skills training in a project to fight youth unemployment in Ethiopia, and connect this to the research on the effectiveness of the methodology that is used in this life skills training. Following this, we will explore in which manner life skills education serves as a measure to fight youth unemployment as to enable exploration of their positive liberty. Positive liberty pertains to the human desire to be the master of their own life, be moved by their own reasons and not be affected by the outside factors. The paper zooms out and discusses the political context in which the life skills program is implementing, pointing out the paradox of promoting positive liberty with life skills education, within a program that focusses on influencing the decisions people make on migration (restricting positive liberty). Balancing the different motives of the stakeholders in life skills education, which is illustrated by using the concept of positive liberty, is key for impactful implementation of life skills programs. While analyzing the working elements of life skills education, contextualization is pointed out as one of the main working elements of life skills programming. Moreover, if young people are put in the centre of program development, contextualization has the potential to tackle the contradiction of political motives in programming and enabling the positive liberty of young people.

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