Global Partnerships for Life Skills Education

Description

Together with Uglobe we organized the 'Global Partnerships for Life Skills Education' conference supported by the DoY community Youth Education & Life Skills (YELS). The conference aimed to foster collaboration between Utrecht University (UU) and partners in the Global South, building on the Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE) network while welcoming broader explorations and collaborations. The conference aimed at:

…build partnerships: between UU colleagues, departments and faculties with the aim of strengthening collaboration with universities and NGO’s in the Global South.

…exchange knowledge exchange in which perspectives from Utrecht University and partners in the Global South are represented.

…foster capacity building/professionalization focused on becoming a community of global researchers.

…inspire and form new collaborations for future projects.

Thematic focus

System transitions related to education/pedagogy/youth, with a specific focus on life skills education. We raise the question of how to foster large system-based transformations in education and aim to learn from comparing different approaches in different continents, with a focus on the African continent that all can relate to the idea of life skills education.

Research plays a crucial role in driving and shaping the transition to life skills education at a systemic level. From developing effective measurement tools to evaluating the integration of life skills into curricula, research initiatives provide the insights needed to guide and sustain system-wide change. In this conference we ask the question how we can optimize the relationship between research and system based change in education.

Collaboration, responsibilities and roles of/ between different stakeholders in such transitions/system change, amongst those universities/researchers/NGO’s donors next to state based stakeholders such as ministries and other public institutions.

Life Skills Education: what it means globally: What is the origin of life skills education? How did it travel through the different continents and contexts? How did the concept also change meaning in those contexts, and what can be learned from this for the implementation of life skills education? We will focus on the different meanings, histories and experiences across continents and contexts of life skills education, how these perspectives can inform each other, and how we can learn from the different experiences, contexts, meanings, histories.

In the context of decolonialization. We will ask these questions also in the light of the prominence of so called ‘decolonization’, a perspective that seeks to critique, undo, and radically re-think euro-centered ways of thinking, being and power which has served, enabled and legitimized former colonization processes (Rabello de Castro, 2020), and the promotion of a decolonial turn which seeks to re-establish international collaboration on a different ground, in which global exchange is based on equal relationships, acknowledgement of the uniqueness of the perspective of the other, mutuality and justice.

Period	12 Jun 2025
Event type	Conference
Location	Utrecht, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International