Life skills in adolescents to face violence

In recent times, Fundación Pro Niños has generated strategies that increase the protective factors of children and teenagers at risk, thereby reducing their risk of connecting with street life practices that harm them and become an obstacle for their right to a decent life. .

One of these strategies was to generate workshops to reduce violence in school spaces at secondary school level. During the workshops, it was possible to detect that more than 70% of the teenagers recognize that their acts are violent; however, they do not consider it feasible to modify their behaviors since this would leave them in conditions of vulnerability to their environment.

We decided to pause the work in schools to strengthen the analysis and a methodology that allow a significant impact on the collective construction of a culture of peace. For this reason, during this year we only gave the workshop “The relationship between emotions with the use of violence” in high school #270, Celestino Gorostiza.

We cover topics such as:

• Joy, its utility and risk.
• Anger, its utility and risk.
• Fear, its utility and risk.
• Sadness, its usefulness and risk.
• How can I regulate my emotion?

The objective of this workshop was to develop and strengthen cognitive skills by facilitating problem solving and decision making in the social environment.

With this 17-session workshop, we were able to sensitize 63 students about violence, to recognize that it is learned and that it is possible to modify behaviors related to it.

We also manage to establish safer and more favorable interactions between students through the application of various emotional regulation techniques.

“ we addressed the issue of violence prevention through workshops that favored the development of life skills as a fundamental basis for prevention. The participation of the students was very valuable. We create development and evaluation framing strategies to determine the level of knowledge about the topics that were developed in the workshop. At the beginning, it was detected that violence was exerted between peers in the same classroom and even towards the speakers; at the end of the workshop this behavior was reduced.

The participation of the school authorities was essential for the development of the workshops. They recognize that working together is the most important factor to reduce the rates of violence experienced by students in the different areas in which they develop.

The experience of preventive work with secondary school students is necessary to identify and reduce violent practices and to be able to strengthen those skills that allow them to have healthier and safer interactions. "

David, TC educator