Category: Education and Skills
Client: National Youth Corps
The Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs in Sri Lanka and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have a longstanding collaboration in the Youth Development Sector. This partnership was further strengthened under UNDP Asia and the Pacific Regional Youth Programme (YEP-AP) 2023-2026 and HackaDev – UNDP Sri Lanka’s flagship youth development programme.
In 2022, heeding the call of National Youth Corps (NYC) which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs, the UNDP commenced the revamping of NYC’s Life Skills Curriculum with the support of Citra, HackaDev Academy of Learning and Skills, other UN agencies, subject matter experts, and technical professionals.
National Youth Corps is the mandated body for provision of Life Skills for young people in Sri Lanka. It has a network of 58 training centers across the island covering all districts. Furthermore, NYC has a strong pool of over 200 Life Skills Instructors. Through this setup, NYC is currently serving an estimate of 10,000 young people annually.
21st century skills are foundational for a resilient and innovative young generation in Sri Lanka that can take leadership in accelerating the SDGs for the country. By transforming national institutions that serve young people to be user-centric, future-ready and to leave no one behind, young people can be equipped with essential skills including Life Skills. Through this programmatic intervention, young people in Sri Lanka, especially from underserved and vulnerable backgrounds, will have access and will benefit from the acquisition of critical and relevant skills that will enable them to succeed in multiple aspects of life such as civic rights and participation, lifelong learning, decent work, health and well-being and others, whilst contributing to society in a responsible and productive manner.
Citra’s expertise in human centered design approaches were catalytic in designing and implementing a transformative programme for NYC. Furthermore, the facilitative training capacity at Citra was an advantage to the successful completion of the programme.
HackaDev Academy of Learning and Skills, supported by Citra, has been working with young people across Sri Lanka providing 21st Century skills. HackaDev Academy’s learning programmes such as Technopreneurship for Social Change, Engage to Disengage, Youth for Diversity and Inclusion and Innovation for Social Change were incorporated into the Life Skills Curriculum of NYC. With the expertise of the HackaDev programme and Citra Lab, Training of Trainer (TOT) and Train The Trainer (TTT) programmes were designed and delivered to provide the Life Skills instructors of NYC with relevant technical knowledge on the modules of the new curriculum and skills to become more effective trainers.
Preliminary assessments, surveys, discussions, interviews, and observations by the UNDP team identified the existing Life Skills curriculum as a foundation that requires significant enhancement across content, instructor guidance, learning aids, materials, and delivery methodologies. The curriculum is offered as a three-month course for all NYC students island-wide. The revamp began with a collaborative exercise between UNDP and NYC core teams to cluster existing modules and identify new critical areas for inclusion.
Together with technical experts and other UN agencies, UNDP’s Citra Social Innovation Lab through the HackaDev Academy of Learning and Skills developed the Life Skills Curriculum for NYC consisting of the following nine modules:
The modules included learning resources, classroom content and instructor’s guide books for each module in Sinhala, Tamil and English.
UNDP conducted 25 TOT programmes for three batches of Life Skills Instructors, including an awareness programme for Provincial Directors and Officers in Charge of the Training Centers over a period of one year. Over 200 Development Officers and Development Assistants working in the capacity of Life Skills Instructors and officials were trained on the upgraded syllabus, which will be delivered to more than 10,000 young people annually at NYC’s 58 Training Centers.
An awards ceremony to recognize trained instructors is planned. UNDP will publish a final project report on the project progress, further detailing recommendations to be adopted by NYC and the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs in similar engagements and exercises.
