47 teachers attend self-esteem masterclass

Forty-sev­en teach­ers from 20 pri­vate schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go have par­tic­i­pat­ed in a mas­ter­class aimed at help­ing ed­u­ca­tors ad­dress body im­age con­cerns and self-es­teem among young peo­ple.

The vir­tu­al Dove Self-Es­teem Project Con­fi­dent Me Ed­u­ca­tor Mas­ter­class, host­ed by Unilever Caribbean on Oc­to­ber 16, pro­vid­ed re­search-based in­for­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal re­sources to help teach­ers dis­cuss ap­pear­ance pres­sures, body con­fi­dence and self-worth with stu­dents.

The ses­sion was host­ed by in­te­gra­tive psy­chother­a­pist Si­mone Da Cos­ta, who guid­ed ed­u­ca­tors through is­sues in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia fil­ters, ap­pear­ance-based com­par­isons, celebri­ty in­flu­ence, ad­ver­tis­ing and the ef­fects of every­day lan­guage on how young peo­ple per­ceive them­selves.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Unilever Caribbean Ginelle Lam­bie said the ini­tia­tive re­flect­ed the com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing young peo­ple be­yond its prod­ucts and brands.

“Young peo­ple are grow­ing up in an en­vi­ron­ment where so­cial me­dia, peer in­ter­ac­tions, and broad­er so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tions can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence how they see them­selves and their val­ue,” Lam­bie said.

She said the project aimed to equip teach­ers, who in­ter­act with young peo­ple dai­ly, with cred­i­ble re­sources to strength­en con­ver­sa­tions about self-es­teem and body con­fi­dence.

The mas­ter­class builds on Unilever Caribbean's work in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2025, when the com­pa­ny con­duct­ed Dove Self-Es­teem Project work­shops at 14 sec­ondary schools na­tion­wide.

This year's ses­sion placed par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the in­flu­ence ed­u­ca­tors can have on stu­dents' per­cep­tions of them­selves, in­clud­ing through class­room con­ver­sa­tions and the lan­guage used when dis­cussing ap­pear­ance.

One par­tic­i­pat­ing teacher de­scribed the mas­ter­class as a valu­able re­source, par­tic­u­lar­ly as stu­dents nav­i­gate the pres­sures of so­cial me­dia and ex­pec­ta­tions about how they should look.

The teacher said the in­for­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal guid­ance could be ap­plied in in­ter­ac­tions with stu­dents, help­ing ed­u­ca­tors en­cour­age young peo­ple not to de­fine their con­fi­dence and val­ue sole­ly by their ap­pear­ance.

The pro­gramme al­so en­cour­aged teach­ers to recog­nise stu­dents for their abil­i­ties, ideas, char­ac­ter, cre­ativ­i­ty and con­tri­bu­tions, rather than plac­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate em­pha­sis on phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance.

De­vel­oped in part­ner­ship with the Cen­tre for Ap­pear­ance Re­search, the Dove Self-Es­teem Project is based on sci­en­tif­ic re­search in­to body im­age and self-es­teem among young peo­ple.

Its Con­fi­dent Me re­sources are de­signed to help stu­dents de­vel­op body con­fi­dence and re­silience. Ac­cord­ing to Unilever Caribbean, glob­al re­search un­der­pin­ning the pro­gramme has found that stu­dents who com­plete its ses­sions can ex­pe­ri­ence im­prove­ments in body con­fi­dence, self-es­teem and so­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic con­fi­dence.

Lam­bie said self-es­teem could af­fect how young peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in school, built re­la­tion­ships, re­spond­ed to chal­lenges and pur­sued op­por­tu­ni­ties.