Monday, March 23, 2009

One day workshop on Self Esteem for girls in the ages 13 to 18 years of






Topic: Workshop on Self Esteem                            

Venue: Balar Kalvi Nilayam School

Organised by: World Vision, India – Street Children’s project    

Time: 9.30a.m - 4:30p.m

Description:

The session was organized by the World Vision for children from

disadvantaged communities, 77 children from three different

communities attended the workshop. The Volunteers also came

from World Vision to help us in the work shop. The sessions was

handled by Center for Counselling. 

The session started with an explanation about the self esteem and

its importance. The workshop was for children above the age

of twelve up to eighteen and they were separated into seven

groups consists of eleven children with two volunteers in each

group to guide them, children much younger were sent

outside with one of our volunteers to play and draw, etc provided

with charts and crayons.

 

Session: 1 – Election campaign

 

Objective: To think about one’s own positive values and

attitudes which in turns helps in increasing self esteem.

 

The children in the groups were given charts and crayons and

asked to write and draw about their own positive characters.

These characters should not be imaginative about themselves

and it should be what they think about themselves and not what

others think. The children were asked to present their presentations

among the group members. Most of the children wrote many

positive characters about themselves like “ I can easily get along

with others....”, “ I’m a very confident person.....” , “ I don’t care

if others gossip about me...”. A child from each group were asked to

give her feed back regarding her experience by doing this activity.

One of the children said “I love myself after writing all my good

qualities and I’m happy being a part of this workshop”. 

Then we quoted an old Tamil proverb “Niraikudam Thalumbathu”

meaning the pot that is full of water cannot spill water out likewise

if we have high self esteem about themselves then others cannot

stop us from reaching our goals.

 

Session: 2 - Giving and Receiving imaginary gifts

 

Objective: To demonstrate that giving gifts to others and receiving

from others show warmth, love and affection.

 

The children were asked to share the happiest moment

which they have experienced in the past ten days within their

group members. The children expressed different happenings,

some of them were “ My friend spoke to me after a long quarrel.....” ,

“ We don’t  have a home but government provided us a new

house.......”. After expressing their views, they were asked to give

a gift to one of the children in the group. Then a child from each

group gave feed back about this session. Most of them said that

they have never expressed their feelings to others and this is the

first time doing so and they enjoyed giving gifts to others and they

felt proud to get gifts from their friends. The children liked that their

friends thought of gifts that really liked.


Session: 3 Flower garden

Objective:  To help children understand that differences in

people –color, values etc makes life  more interesting. 


The children were provided with same color of charts but

with different colour paper to four groups and 2 groups

were provided with all colours of paper and asked them

to make flowers with the chart and colour paper. They made

the flower garden with great enthusiasm and they were asked

to present it in front of all the groups. All the children liked the

garden with different colours. 

We initiated a discussion about the color of one’s skin, an

informative session on the ill effects of trying to lighten the

skin by using creams. This session was done specifically to

handle the marketing gimmicks which talk about fair girls

being beautiful and dark skinned girls as not being beautiful. 

We also discussed that beauty is from inside, the kind of person

we are and not the color of the skin.


Session: 4 - Karuppu than enakku pidicha colouru

 

Objective: To help children accept and appreciate the

color of their skin

 

The children were again separated based on the activity they

like to do on the Topic “Karuppu than enakku pidicha colouru”.

The activities are drawing, poetry, collage. Three children from

each group participated in each activity. The children participated

in all the three activity has done well.

Self esteem is important in life, which will help the children

to have good personality and helps to reach their goals.

We also answered few questions asked by the children

regarding their own personal issues.