Our Goal
Our core purpose is to equip the society for advancement towards a livelihood of dignity and respect for all.

Our Vision
A society in which all members enjoy a life of dignity free of want, exclusion and/or stigmatization

Our Mission
Our mission is to build the capacity of social institutions to promote sustainable human development for community members to lead a productive life of dignity. We promote sharing of knowledge and skills in support of programs and practices that enhance a dignified livelihood for all people and promote social structures that create a favorable environment for individuals to enjoy their rights.

Background
For Sustainable human development to be achieved, development practitioners must constantly increase their knowledge and understanding of how to best achieve positive change in complex, changing, and unpredictable environments. Learning from our experience, and from the experiences of others, is key to improving the quality of development practice and helping more people to overcome poverty. Learning helps to make development work more effective by:
Challenging us to think differently, question our assumptions, and see things from a new perspective;

• Helping us to develop a shared understanding about how we think development work can contribute to overcoming poverty;
• Helping us to identify what is working well and why so that we can continue and increase effective projects and programmes;
• Identifying gaps and highlighting what is not working well so that we can avoid repeating mistakes;
• Increasing our ability to respond to new and unpredictable challenges and opportunities in changing working environments;
• Encouraging us to look beyond our day-to-day programme activities, to regularly consider the larger question of what impact we are having on people’s lives;
• Helping us assess how well resources are being used and how we might use them more effectively;
• Increasing people’s motivation and satisfaction in what they do by valuing their experience and opinions;
• Encouraging us to set realistic time frames for realizing our desired impact;
• Playing a part in building trust, respect and openness in relationships both within organizations, and with stakeholders and partners.

Strategic outcomes
Despite a substantive progress towards human rights, welfare, peace and justice in a matter of decades, human rights are still challenged. The promises and hopes that socio-technological advancement has sparked have been accompanied by heightened insecurity and threats to the livelihoods of many people who have had difficult in finding their place in the new world order. Education for Life Institute recognizes that quality life long learning- both in and out of school, has both social and economic value with a high capacity to open up space for enjoyment of human rights by all. Towards this end Education for Life Institute will strive towards attainment of the following outcomes

A community of development workers whose practice is informed by two knowledge streams; first, evidence informed practice; a blend of experience and the best empirical research. The second stream is the interactive Action Research Processes applied to ones evolving practices.

Knowledge and skills development systems addressing both the current and emerging needs of the community for sustainable human development

A community of empowered young people thirsty to acquire, interpret and apply knowledge by themselves and actively participating in the life of community thereby reducing dependency and manipulation

Strategic initiatives
The following strategic initiatives will guide EfLI during the period 2007-2010

Capacity building program:
The capacity building/Skills building is based on information sharing, training on new skills and the advancement of simple knowledge to a greater height. It creates the know-how and provides more opportunities to entangle with communities’ dynamics of life. The program thereby will address various issues ranging from but not limited to the development practice and theory, human rights, sharing of lessons to nurturing of innovations that boost and sustain new ideas in sustainable human development. The capacity building program targets development workers.

Strengthen the core of our services:
We shall strengthen our ability to promote quality learning for sustainable human development processes

Leveraging research into action through advocacy and participation:
We shall align our approach and resources more with the external environment. This will ultimately assist in accessing significant additional untapped financial resources. Secondly, we shall enter into an advocacy partnership with like-minded organizations to leverage research into action. Through partnership, EfLI will become part of a global authority that will influence decision makers and a variety of partners to turn the most innovative ideas into reality. EfLI will work with others to overcome the obstacles that poverty and inequalities, political ineptitude and environmental mismanagement place on the path to quality learning for sustainable human well being. We shall also,

• Contribute to the development of policies that impact on quality of learning for sustainable human development
• Identify media and other relevant communication spaces in the social development community and determine a strategy for participation
• Share policies with partners and develop joint policies on common objective areas
• Mass mobilization for consensus and support building