Life Skills education is quite new for the Albanian context, although the term may sound familiar to the Albanian public. It aims at helping people to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to be responsible citizens in a civilized society. As such it implies not only provision of information but also acquisition of skills and changes in attitudes. These skills include critical and creative skills, ability to know yourself, to communicate with others, to take the right decisions, to come to mutual understanding, to cope with emotions, stress and conflicts. Life Skills education may be applied also to promote healthy life styles free of Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs, HIV/AIDS and STI.

At present the young people are confronted with challenges completely different from those of the previous generations. Some of these challenges have existed before, but new ones have put the youth at risk. For instance: HIV-AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, sexual exploitation and other forms of exploitation, alcohol, smoking and drugs have now become the cause of taking the lives of many young people, at a time when these could have very well been prevented. The complexity of these problems requires a multi-faceted and comprehensive strategy.

The Life Skills Project had two main components:

• the production of the Life Skills Manual (LSM) and
• a series of training seminars with teachers from the districts