Life Skills Curriculum

In places where adolescents face gender inequality, poverty or limited access to education, life skills can mean the difference between surviving and thriving. 
 
Across the globe, too many adolescent girls are dropping out of secondary school due to pressure to take on domestic caregiving duties, find work and marry. According to UNESCO, an estimated 122 million girls are currently out of school around the globe, and women continue to account for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read.  

Room to Read's Gender Equality Portfolio supports all adolescents, particularly girls, to develop life skills that promote gender equality — enabling them to pursue lifelong learning and make informed decisions. 
 
We support young people, in all their diversity, to overcome gender biases and build the knowledge and skills to create a gender-equal world. Our life skills curriculum develops five key skills for adolescents — collaboration, resilience, leadership, decision-making and critical thinking — through which they learn to self-advocate and chart successful life paths that they choose for themselves.  
 

Our life skills curriculum also contains content knowledge that adolescents need to make informed decisions about their lives in areas such as sexual and reproductive health, financial literacy, climate change, safety and rights, and gender norms.

Across contexts, our life skills curriculum has proven to boost adolescent life skills — particularly emotional resilience and decision-making. It drives statistically significant changes after just two years of implementation versus comparison schools, proving our approach is supporting the development of more confident, equity-minded youth.  
 

What is a life skills curriculum? 

A life skills curriculum equips adolescents with practical and emotional skills that are essential for success in school and beyond, and that promote gender equality. This educational approach supports the development of both hard skills, such as financial literacy and time management, and soft skills, such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking.  

Our seven-year, gender-transformative life skills curriculum is delivered in a variety of contexts, from traditional classrooms to after-school programs to digital media content. Through classes, workshops and extracurricular activities, adolescents learn how to apply these key skills in their daily lives and become better equipped to advocate for themselves and handle challenges — from gender discrimination to building self-confidence to finding time to study.  

Lesson topics include: 

• Respectful communication: disagreement and self-advocacy
  Adolescents learn how to communicate effectively during conflicts, and how to advocate for themselves even when no one else will.  
  
  
• Do I need it or want it?
  Adolescents build practical financial management skills that will serve them throughout their lives. 
  
  
• Planning my career: goal setting 
  Adolescents envision and prepare for their future through actionable planning and self-motivation. 
  
  
• Strategies for self-care
  Adolescents reflect on what it means to care for their physical and mental wellbeing and create a self-care plan.   
  
  
• Gender roles and stereotypes  
  Adolescents explore and challenge limiting gender norms and envision a more gender-equal world. 
  
  
• And so much more!  

Designed for students in grades 6 through 12, our curriculum is delivered to millions of young people each year. Room to Read trains and supports local leaders and educators around the world, who serve as mentors that support students through both group sessions and one-on-one guidance.  

What makes Room to Read’s life skills curriculum unique? 

Our programming stands apart from traditional approaches in the following ways: 

• Focused on dignity: Room to Read promotes self-worth and agency throughout its programs, with a belief that every student deserves to feel respected, valued and capable of shaping their own future. 
  
  
• Uniquely comprehensive: We integrate emotional, social and practical skills across multiple years for sustained impact and long-term behavior change. 
  
  
• Community-informed: Developed with community input to reflect local cultures, languages and challenges, we strive to make lessons culturally relevant and resonant. 
  
  
• Designed to reach more students, more quickly: Our life skills curriculum is built for easy government adoption and rapid scale through training, open-source tools and adaptable implementation models. 

Promoting gender equality requires engaging all genders

At Room to Read, we have seen firsthand how engaging boys in our life skills curriculum helps challenge harmful gender norms and limiting stereotypes, and supports healthier, more equal gender dynamics. We also recognize that large-scale government adoption is key to scaling change and building a more gender-equal world. So, when public schools cannot support girls exclusively, we must serve all genders to achieve lasting, system-level impact. 

Learn more about our programming