This recent statement that we found sparked off one of the ideas for our Self Esteem days at Emmbrook school. What if our intelligence wasn’t all about academic achievement?

Can we succeed even if we don’t pass our all GCSE’s with A*? If we are aware from a young age what we’re good at, what we enjoy, what inspires us then this will help us to succeed in those things, it will help our self esteem. So the young people we worked with on the drop down days looked at multiple intelligences; visual intelligence, bodily, interpersonal and musical to name a few and they realized there was more they were good at than they first thought. We gave them space to look beyond the academic subjects.

“This really helped me to think about myself for who I am. Thank you!”

During the session we asked our young people to fill a jar with positive and negative

things that made them who they were – things that had been said about them, things they thought, facts about themselves etc. At the end they had to take out all the negative things and place them in a big rubbish bin, so they were left with only positivity to take away. Sadly many of our girls, particularly, were left with very few positive things at all – we found this heartbreaking to see these wonderful young girls with little self esteem. Inspired by this we are looking to run a session on positive female role models for our young girls who are often bombarded by lies in magazines, the internet and relationships. The lies are so deep rooted that even when they are given the truth they seem only to see the lies. This has to change!

“Really helped me open up and think about things in my relationship.”