Every year AIL holds dozens and dozens of workshops. Even last year, as Afghan citizens watched their lives change again, AIL held workshops. Over the next few weeks we will highlight the various workshops we hold in provinces across the country. This is about our Life Skills program. Life Skills are not only the basics of everyday living such as cooking and cleaning, sleeping well and eating nutritious foods. This also means emotional life skills. Self control, self esteem. Leadership and deescalation. Without those skills a society isn’t peaceful. Nobody knows how to handle their negative emotions.
Emotions are complex. At some point in life, every one of us has had feelings so complicated we have no idea what to do with them. We can’t even name them effectively. When we cannot see how our anger, our hurt, impacts our behavior we can’t control our own reaction. Teaching women how to channel frustration into leadership skills, rather than at herself or loved ones is something no one ever teaches in Afghanistan. Showing how deescalation prevents both physical and emotional violence, and how to use deescalation techniques to protect themselves and others, reduces social violence against women and children.
Life is better when we honor ourselves and our feelings
Adults teach children with every movement how to view the world. Hitting, hurtful words, making a fight worse, egging people on, children absorb these lessons whether we ever tell them to act that way or not. Children do not stay children. They grow into adulthood knowing only what the world taught them. In a nation at war for over fifty years, violence, fear and insecurity is widespread. Not only does self worth suffer, it impacts a people’s ability to contribute meaningfully to their home. To combat dependency, AIL realized we must teach emotional life skills and have done so for decades. Each woman we reach, is a woman who passes that knowledge on to her children and family. Modeling is the single most useful method of teaching. One women reaches five other people. Peace spreads in the community. Slowly, so slowly, a change comes. This is why AIL offers our Life Skills workshops
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