Aridity may plague their surroundings, but their enduring resilience tells their stories beyond the scorched borders. Their cultures still weave in values and life skills albeit the domineering digital disruptions. They are open to talk and open to learn. This is a highlight of ALiVE’s community dialogues aimed at promoting life skills and values in Isiolo, Kenya.
In the heart of Isiolo County resides the heat of the sun. It shines too bright and too hot as to crack the ground! Therefore, a large indigenous tree shade makes for a conference hall in mid-March. Even so, nothing is certain with regards to the weather patterns. We arrive at Kambi ya Juu Integrated School with the rain that disrupts an otherwise grounded meeting with community members (parents and education leaders). We all run to one of the classrooms and camp there until the rain subsides, just enough to let us hear our voices, under the yelling iron sheet roofs.
When we settle down, one truth sinks in: modern realities present unique challenges in nurturing and promoting life skills and values, even in this conservative community.
“Mobile phones have taken over family conversations. Nowadays, everyone hibernates to their devices in the evening to catch up with the rest of the world, while losing out on family dialogues that we grew up enjoying and learning life through,” laments a mother.
“Through the same phones, young people are exposed to evil. Alcohol and substance abuse are coated in appealing content, and this misleads our children. You don’t know who is talking to your child anymore, or what they are watching or reading. Besides, the children themselves do not feel free to share their lives with adults. How then do you nurture values?” asks a father.
Such unsettling realities justify the relevance of the Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa, (ALiVE) initiative. ALiVE’s core business is to support education systems and communities, to enable children and adolescents to acquire core competencies (generic skills/life skills and values) that help them navigate life through school and beyond.
ALiVE Regional Summit 2025
In March 2025, ALiVE held its second regional summit in Isiolo, Kenya. It brought together key system actors in education from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania mainland, and Zanzibar. The summit sought to unpack ALiVE’s theory of change to make meaning of the connection between national-level change and school or community-level changes that directly impact children. The overall message was that life skills and values drive success and help individuals and societies coexist and progress meaningfully.
The summit also gathered government officials from across East Africa.
“We live in a society where integrity has cracks. So how do we build values such as accountability in our children? We must not only teach them but also model them so that our children can copy them along. At the end of the day the character of our children impacts all of us. You will not enjoy riding your car with a child who has lost their values and comes to steal your phone. You will not enjoy your home when somebody breaks in and robs you of your property because they have lost their minds to drugs. It is therefore our collective responsibility to shape our children’s character. I want to thank the collaborative efforts through ALiVE initiative, because of the changes we are seeing so far.” said Dr. Grace Baguma, the Deputy Executive Director of the National Curriculum Development Council in Uganda.
The weeklong regional summit was the climax of the celebration of the key milestones which ALiVE has achieved in its 5 years of operation, including: stronger relationships with system agencies; the finalization of frameworks, tools and materials for embedding life skills and values in education curricula, teacher training and assessment; and the training support to 818 system actors to institutionalize these competences. The notable achievements also include significant knowledge sharing and policy influence at national and global events; leadership development through a distributed leadership model and staff transitions, gender programming, the institutionalization of RELI Africa, and securing more funding.
Collaborating to promote core competencies across East Africa
ALiVE’s collaborative approach positions it to work with both government and non-governmental organizations. This is aimed to support education systems in East Africa, to embed as well as assess core-competencies within their respective education curricula.
“Our approach is to work with government institutions because there are various institutions that oversee the CBC implementation. We do not believe in blame games, but we take the approach of cocreating and collaborating with government agencies to ease the implementation of CBC. For instance, we are working with teacher educators, to develop content that integrates life skills and values. This will enable the trained teachers to embrace core-competencies and be able to nurture and assess them once they are deployed,” noted Dr. Mugo.
ALiVE thrives in co-creation to build ownership and foster learning, in the journey of core-competencies (also known as life skills and values).
ALiVE exists to generate and share evidence that would enhance the implementation of competency-based education across East Africa.
“The evidence and data that ALiVE co-creates and shares forms part of the critical pillar needed to support a shift towards a competency-based curriculum that delivers value-based education,” said Dr. Irene Nyamu, the Chief Executive Officer of RELI Africa.
Representing the Director of Quality and Standards in the Ministry of Education (Kenya), Christine Muchemi summarized her input into 7 words: Collaboration, Capacity, Mindsets, Assessment, Communities, Pedagogies and Rewards. Dr. Goretti Nakabugo, the ALiVE Co-PI in Uganda, emphasized that ALiVE’s System Shift approach is like a four-legged stool that stands on curriculum, assessment, teacher training and parental involvement.
Stakeholders at the summit called for concerted efforts in promoting values and life skills for a more inclusive and safer society.
Participants also proposed efforts to leverage technology to spread positive content that will promote life skills and values, “Let us saturate social media with a load of positive content so that it sinks into our children,” noted a priest who had attended a dialogue session at Kambi ya Juu primary school.
ALiVE also welcomed six new organizational partners, unlocking the theory of change at sub-national level (see figure below), alongside four Universities establishing the research pillar.
The Pastoralists Women for Health and Education, led by Shoba Liban, were the co-hosts of the summit, whose launch was also presided over by Isiolo County Deputy Governor Dr. James Lowasa. Dr. Lowasa challenged stakeholders to ensure that education addresses the needs of local and pastoralist economies. “ALiVE will be alive not to leave anyone behind. If you’re alive, you should be in ALiVE,” deputy county boss urged.
Besides the summit proceedings, ALiVE also visited six schools in Isiolo, engaged over 300 parents and over 70 policy makers through the county education dialogues.
By Ray Polo
@polo_raynor
