What are we trying to achieve?

What outcomes are we after? What does success look like? How do we know we are making a difference?

A lot of education and social development programs begin by identifying desired outcomes, designing activities to achieve them, and measuring the results.

At Lifespan Education, we approach these questions differently. We believe human beings are more than the outcomes we can measure.

The gifts of being human

Throughout our lives, we receive gifts from other people. We find it invaluable when we receive the gift of presence, of being heard and seen, being welcomed. We give each other the gifts of trust, care, belonging, and the freedom to become someone.

We also have gifts simply by being human. We have a life to live, a world to encounter, and the possibilities of feeling, wondering, caring, and finding meaning. Each of us experiences and lives them differently.

We form as human beings through these gifts.

Sometimes our gifts come through extraordinary moments in our lives. More often though, they are found in ordinary moments of living.

As we live, we have opportunities to discover the gifts in us and offer our gifts to others. We believe these gifts are worth our work and effort to make room for them and to make them available in the world. 

This is what Lifespan Education seeks to do.

Receiving. Living WITH. Passing on.

Our work is grounded in three interconnected parts of gifting.

We recognise the gifts we have simply by being human, as well as the gifts we receive through our encounters, relationships, and experiences. We learn to notice what life and others have made available to us, including things we may have taken for granted.

We participate in our own ongoing formation. Through reflection, relationships, choices, and everyday experiences, we explore what these gifts mean in the lives we actually live.

Through our presence, participation, and the ways we walk alongside others, we make these gifts available beyond ourselves.

A life walking alongside others is a life of continually receiving, living with, and passing on gifts.

So, what are we trying to achieve?

We seek to make the gifts of being human more available to one another through the lives we share. We do this by supporting people in their own formation and in their participation in the formation of others.

We begin with ourselves, living, reflecting, learning, and walking alongside people in our own communities. We invite others to participate, and support them in doing the same in their own lives and relationships.

The work grows through people, much more than the replication of lessons, courses, or programmes. We cannot prescribe what another human being should become. Nor can we claim that the gifts we offer will be received in the ways we intend. But we can be intentional about what we make available to one another.

How do we know whether we are making a difference?

We can examine whether we are living consistently with our commitments, whether we are creating genuine opportunities for participation, and whether our resources are being used responsibly.

We can listen to people’s experiences, invite feedback, document what happens, and learn from independent research and evaluation.

We can be accountable to each other for what we do, how we do it, and how we respond to what we discover.

But we distinguish these responsibilities from claiming ownership of another person’s formation. This distinction is fundamental to us. It allows us to be purposeful without being prescriptive, and accountable without reducing human life to a set of outcomes.

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And life goes on

The gifts of being human do not belong to those of us in Lifespan Education.

Some gifts are ours simply by being human. Others come to us through the lives of others. We continue to discover their meaning through our own living. And we have opportunities to pass them on.

We hope that through our work, more people will have opportunities to receive these gifts, live with them, and offer them to others.

We all participate in one another’s formation.