Self-esteem awareness campaign for community women in Kavresthali

The goal of VIN’s women’s empowerment program is to empower women socially and economically through education, life skills and income generation initiatives. This program includes the women’s entrepreneurship development, micro credit, education and life skills and research. In the beginning VIN has implemented different type of education in Kavresthali by international volunteers. VIN has also given training on Basic computer skills, English language training and book keeping training to these women and now VIN has started self-esteem awareness campaign for the community women groups. The VIN team noticed that the women had low self-esteem. After some discussion among the volunteers, we decided to create a self-esteem lesson which was basically a kind of self-esteem awareness campaign. The lesson was divided in two parts: a theoretical and a practical part. During the theoretical part the volunteers give information about the importance to have a positive self-esteem, they aware them about the different thoughts that can reduce self-esteem and they provide them with tips to improve their self-esteem. During the practical session, the volunteers asked to the women to think about three of their positive characteristics. Then, they wrote down one of those characteristics on a paper and took pictures of the women with their cards.

The women looked very interested about the lesson even though it was a difficult exercise for them. While the volunteers were trying to make them speak about their own positive characteristics, most of the women were answering “my husband has a good job” or “my son is doing great studies”. However, after a constructive dialogue between the volunteers and the group, all the women were able to do the exercise correctly and were proud to be taken in picture with their cards.

This self-esteem awareness class was found to be very helpful for those women as it enabled them to be more self-confident during the following  next lessons (such as public speaking) and it motivate them to improve their situation. The team had a really good feedback from the women about these lessons, for example, one woman told them “This lesson was very useful, I feel better now and I want to continue this type of lesson in future as well.”