Skills For Living is directly addressing the challenge of providing high school students with motivating, quality financial and career planning information through our 12-course integrated curriculum called Real Life. The curriculum is designed to provide the freshman in high school with information needed to successful play the game of life, an 8-hour reality based financial decision making game that projects students to graduation from high school and beyond and has them make decisions as to whether they will rent an apartment, furnished, unfurnished, with or without utilities, buy a home, how many room mates they will need to share expenses, compete for jobs, buy cars, borrow money, buy insurance, finance college, get married and have children. The game takes them from age 18 to 25 and they make decisions based on the knowledge they gained from the 12 financial and career planning courses.

Because the students come from low-income families, it is important for them to have an opportunity to interact with college graduates. For this reason, we will use members of our business community as instructors and sponsors for the game.

The objective of Real Life is to have students spend enough time in their future so they clearly understand that every decision they make today will impact that future.

How do volunteers help this program?

Volunteers are needed to develop curriculum, create game pieces, signage, find business sponsors- banks, insurance companies, credit unions, car dealerships, apartment locators, real estate agents, recruiters – to instruct courses and host the game. We also will need many volunteers who want to have fun and help with game venue.

How do I become more involved?

The first Monday of each month, Skills For Living holds a New Volunteer Orientation meeting at S4L offices 7660 Woodway, Suite 599, Houston, TX 77063. You can attend this meeting or call our Volunteer Coordinator to arrange an orientation at a different time. In either case, please call Cate Thuo at (713) 782-9974 or email her at Cate@Skills4Living.org to let her know you are interested in volunteering.