IALSE – Indian Association of Life Skills Education
The Indian Association of Life Skills Education (IALSE) is a registered society under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act, 1975. It had its inception in 2010 with the aim “To ignite minds, to unleash the power and empower individuals to face challenges in life”. Since then, the association has been working relentlessly for the promotion of life skills across India.
Life skills is one of the young disciplines which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century. In India, life skills as a subject of study was launched by Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Sriperumbudur in 2008 and subsequently a trainers training programme in Life Skills was started. The professionals working in the field of life skills education and training decided to joined together to form an association, to promote life skills in the country and this led to the formation of IALSE.
The association aims to provide a platform for professionals working in the field of life skills to interact, collaborate and contribute to life skills education and training for individual and national development. IALSE has a pan-India presence, enabling life skills professionals across the country share ideas, resources and expertise. The focus areas of IALSE include training, research and publication in life skills education.
With the stress on life skills in the National Education Policy 2020, there is a great demand for life skills education and this is one of the main thrust areas of IALSE. The formats are customized adopting a competency building approach. It has a rich resource pool of qualified and experienced life skills trainers across the country. IALSE has also developed life skills resource materials that are field tested to enhance learning experience making it enjoyable and effective. IALSE training sessions follow a participatory approach, are learner centric and . tailor made to meet the felt needs of the training participants.
IALSE also carries out consultancy work specialising in designing Life Skills Education curriculum for universities and colleges, who wish to introduce the subject.
IALSE provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to come together and deliberate on their ideas and present their researches at its annual International Conference on Life Skills Education.
In the arena of publication in life skills education, IALSE works towards dissemination of life skills research through it’s publication. IALSE publishes the International Journal of Life Skills Education, which is a bi-annual peer reviewed journal with ISSN. The journal strives to publish research papers highlighting the recent research developments in the field of life skills.
Thus. IALSE works towards encouraging mutual and collective efforts to develop, promote and apply life skills to enhance individual and community wellbeing through inter-disciplinary and trans- disciplinary approaches.