Free Being Me

'Free Being Me'

Watch out for this phrase, you're going to hear a lot more about it from WAGGGS next year but with a Teaser activity available on the website  from September 2013. 

Paul Bigmore, Head of Programme for Dove work in WAGGGS, outlined the Dove global project to a small group of conference delegates; we were encouraged to consider the regional and global relevance of body image and self-esteem and to consider how the project could work in our Member Organisations/countries.

A shocking statistic for you: 6 out of 10 girls will stop doing something they love because of their body image and poor self esteem - see the photo image below for more statistics that will bring home to you what our girls and young women are facing in their lives in our society today.

Dove has worked with 11m girls and young women across the world on projects to improve their self esteem and through the partnership with WAGGGS will reach a further 3.5m by 2016.

Is this an issue just facing girls? No! Boys are affected too. We heard from Swedish delegates how male leaders can help to raise girls' self esteem and how their boys need support as well as girls. It's important for our girls to see that this is an issue for boys and men as well as girls and women.

WAGGGS working with Dove - what are the benefits for us? We'll have new programme resources and badges for our sections with aged relevant material carefully devised in consultation with academic experts, delivered by our peer educators and adult leaders. 

This was just a taster session for our conference delegates but one that we agreed would be useful in supporting our existing self esteem programme material and with relevance to boys as well as girls.