“Practising being human in a digital world”
What are you learning?
A lot of your education is about preparing you for life.
What do you need to know? Who can teach you the skills? How do you prepare for the future?
These are important things.
But you are also formed through living. Through your relationships with parents and friends. Being accepted or rejected. Making mistakes. Falling in love. Being lonely. Belonging somewhere.
These experiences become part of how you understand yourself, other people and the world around you.
There are already many places to find lessons, courses, information and advice.
At Lifespan Education, we focus on our formation through living, and on how we participate in each other’s formation.
Walking ALONGSIDE YOU
Lifespan Education’s mission is to walk alongside young people, and to create opportunities for you to walk alongside one another, as you are formed through living.
Walking alongside does not mean deciding for someone where their life should go. Nor does it mean standing back and leaving them to figure everything out alone.
We all participate in one another’s formation. None of us becomes who we are alone.
What does walking alongside look like?
We make room for another person’s experience.
We make sense together of what we experience.
We turn what we observe and learn into the way we live.
We engage and take an active part in what is happening, rather than only observing or telling someone what to do.
Formation in Digital Spaces
Today, we are formed by:
Online communities
Social media
AI, machines and tools
People across cultures, nationalities and generations.
We are no longer just shaped by people we meet in person.
Why young people?
Adolesence and young adulthood are remarkable periods when questions of identity, belonging, purpose, relationships and our place in the world come to the forefront of our lives.
In today’s world, families, friends and local communities share formative space with content creators and influencers, algorithms, online communities, social media, AI, tools, as well as people on the other side of the world.
We want young people to have others to walk alongside who support their formation in the world they are growing up in
The adults around young people
Young people don’t grow separately from the people around them.
Parents, educators, community leaders and other adults are part of the world in which they are forming.
Our work with adults is therefore part of our work with young people. Adults practise how to listen, stay present, disagree, repair, create and live alongside one another, because the way adults themselves are formed becomes part of the world in which young people grow.
Across cultures, nationalities and Generations.
Our communities and collaborators span countries, cultures and generations.
There is no single way to become a human being, and no one place, culture or generation has all the answers.
We create opportunities for people to encounter one another across those differences, to become better able to live alongside one another.