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.
