The Need for Life Skills Training

This afternoon I'm speaking to a group of moms of students at the Yellowstone Academy who are in a program called Wings. Wings is designed to teach life skills to people trapped in poverty to help them find employment and break out of the cycle that promotes repetition of poverty from generation to generation. Another session of Wings is composed of people who are former addicts and offenders. They receive a week of teaching followed by nine months of mentoring. Yellowstone Academy and Wings are outreaches of the City of Refuge Church.

Last year while in Little Rock I learned of a program to teach life skills to medical students. A retired physician leads this program to provide life education to students for whom employment is not an issue -- but who are grateful for the opportunity to learn other skills important to living. This program is also the outreach of a church, Fellowship Bible Church.

While these two programs are targeting people from opposite ends of our society in terms of employment and opportunity, it's interesting that for both groups, life skills is the issue. And it's exciting that people of faith are the ones seeing and responding to the need.