WHAT: A trainer’s guide for teaching health and life skills to children and young adults based on the experiences of the Mkombozi Centre for Street Children in Tanzania. It provides lesson plans, exercises and games for teaching subjects such as cleanliness, good nutrition, exercise, emotional care, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention and risk assessment, decision making, communication, dealing with peer pressure and setting personal goals.
WHO: Social and community workers, program managers, caregivers, trainers, and youth educators working with street children or other vulnerable children and youth e.g. children in care. Practitioners and trainers involved in psychosocial work.
WHERE: While designed for teaching street children in Tanzania, with some contextual adaptation of the games and stories, these lesson plans can be relevant for youth in other countries, and for use with children in care placements, child headed households, institutions, and young people leaving care. This guide is written in English and Swahili.
WHY: This is a useful resource for supporting children in care, and for preparing young people to live independently. It provides a collection of health and life skills lesson plans that incorporate games and exercises to assist in building a training curriculum that more actively engages children and youth in learning. Includes separate lesson examples for children and young adults, and for training peer (youth) educators. It also provides a sample questionnaire for assessing the health and life skills knowledge of children/youth before building your own training curriculum.
