Activity-Based Learning Provided by Empowered.Works
FIVE TOOLKITS, ONE METHOD

Training that doesn't need a teacher.

Activity-based learning (ABL) is a training approach for building skills in places where a classroom, an instructor, or an internet connection isn't an option. Participants run the sessions themselves, learning from each other's experience instead of a lecture — and the materials presented here, developed initially by the ILO office in Bangkok, are free for any NGO, government agency, or industry group to pick up and adapt.

Browse the five toolkits Download the tools
A large group of young participants working through an ABL session in small circles of chairs
A national-scale ABL session, participants working peer-to-peer in small circles

How activity-based learning works

Every toolkit shares the same three commitments, drawn from participant-led pedagogies like Montessori and Reggio Emilia and adapted for adult, community-level learning.

Peer-driven

Learning from the room, not the front of it

Groups work through structured exercises and discussions built from real, local experience, minimising — or removing entirely — the need for a trained instructor.

Self-facilitated

One literate volunteer is enough

A community member introduces each module and keeps time. No expert has to travel in, which is what makes the model work in isolated or under-resourced places.

Open and low-tech

Free, visual, and easy to translate

Modular, open-source guides are highly visual by design, so they travel across languages and literacy levels — and any organisation can adapt them for its own community.

A small group huddled around a table covered in sticky notes during a peer-learning exercise
Groups work through structured exercises together, using simple tools like sticky notes to compare ideas
Two participants closely discussing a worksheet during a training session
Learning happens conversation by conversation, not lecture by lecture

The five toolkit families

Each toolkit is built for a different point in the same journey — from an individual weighing a first business idea, to a cooperative finding its feet, to a factory floor solving its own production problems.

A community-based enterprise development training session in progress
C-BED

Community-Based Enterprise Development

Peer-to-peer training for aspiring micro-business owners

No outside expert required — a community member runs the sessions while participants work through marketing, costing and financial literacy together.

See the toolkit →
Participants around a table at an ILO Ready for Business hand-over ceremony
R4B

Ready for Business

Entrepreneurship basics for vulnerable youth and refugees

Built with the International Training Centre and the University of Michigan to help displaced and marginalised young people launch sustainable micro-enterprises.

See the toolkit →
A group working through a Our.COOP module together on flip-chart paper
OUR.COOP

Our.COOP

Building and running cooperative businesses

Three modules — Think, Start, Manage — carry a self-help group from testing the cooperative idea through to running it efficiently.

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A small group reviewing factory-improvement worksheets together
FIT

Factory Improvement Toolset

Productivity and working conditions in garment factories

Over 70 short modules bring workers, supervisors and managers into the same room to solve day-to-day problems on the production floor.

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A small business competitiveness training session over breakfast at a hotel
SBC

Small Business Competitiveness Programme

Upgrading tourism and informal-sector micro-enterprises

Practical, step-by-step guides for running a market stall, a homestay or a smallholding farm — built for grassroots tourism economies.

See the toolkit →
A group of young women reviewing ABL notes together outdoors
RESOURCES

Videos & downloads

Watch the toolkits in use, then get the files

Two ILO video playlists and a shared drive with every toolkit, ready to adapt for your own programme.

Go to resources →

Where it's been used

ABL began as a pilot in Cambodia in 2011 and has since spread across Asia and beyond, wherever formal or online classrooms aren't a realistic option. The same modules have also been adapted for soft skills training with leading firms like Samsung, IBM, HSBC and Seagate.

  • Cambodia — original 2011 pilot
  • Lao People's Democratic Republic
  • Philippines
  • Bangladesh (Factory Improvement Toolset)
  • Pakistan (Factory Improvement Toolset)
  • ASEAN tourism economies (Small Business Competitiveness)
  • Refugee and displaced communities across multiple regions (Ready for Business)
A very large conference hall full of participants, including Buddhist monks, working through ABL exercises
A national ABL rollout — hundreds of participants working through the same exercises in small groups at once

NGO partners

The tools have been deployed with a wide variety of NGO partners, including Oxfam, Plan International and Christian Relief Services.

UN & development partners

They've also been used alongside a range of UN and development partners, including UNHCR and UNDP.

Every toolkit, free to adapt.

Get the full set of ABL materials from the shared ILO drive — modules, facilitator guides, and supporting videos.

Download the tools