In October 2018, Echidna Giving commissioned Jaslika Consulting to conduct a study in the East African region covering Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda. EvalDesign, a consultancy firm based in New Delhi, was also contracted to do a parallel study in India. The main purpose of the two studies were to explore the viability of supporting civil society organisations to co-create tools to assess the impact of life skills interventions on adolescents in the study locales. This report presents the synthesized results of the two studies. It highlights the similarities and notes the differences in the study findings, shares insights and makes recommendations on the way forward. The studies were conducted for the Echidna’s Givings own internal learning and discussions, and were not meant to be definitive research on the state of the life skills sector.
The studies found that despite the inclusion of Life Skills Education in the formal curriculum for at least two decades, the subject is still at a nascent stage in the countries under consideration, yet to be fully aligned to their education systems. The studies identified critical gaps in the implementation of Life Skills in the study locales, concluding that there is indeed an urgent need for collective impact initiatives around the development of tools to assess the impact of Life Skills on adolescents.