8. Tools for Building Self-Esteem

* * * * * * * * * * by Francene Gillis * * * * * * * * * *

photo: Bob Martin

FRANCENE GILLIS is a mother, writer, teacher and community activist who lives in Port Hood, Nova Scotia, with her husband, Sandy, and daughters Mary Alisha and Kimberly Dawn. She is a graduate of Port Hood Consolidated and St. Francis Xavier University. She is a leader in the Nova Scotia literacy movement, and has worked with adults for over fifteen years. Of this project she said, "To be a part of this curriculum is indeed an honour as it gave me the chance to learn from women across the nation. My chapter is on self-esteem because I struggled with self-esteem all my life, as do many who grow up in a rural area."

Introduction

In an Adult Educational Needs Assessment conducted across twelve rural communities in Inverness County, Nova Scotia in 1989, by Continuing Education, the majority of people stated that the main obstacle holding them back was a lack of self-esteem. This finding was backed by the findings of Kitchen Ceilidhs (informal meetings) put together in 1994 by Mabou Alive - a group of concerned citizens interested in empowering people and rural communities. They too found low self-esteem to be the main problem in rural communities, especially among women, single mothers and seniors.

We can build our self-esteem if we have the right tools. Very often an inability to read and write makes learners feel inferior and their self-esteem suffers. This chapter is designed to help each learner take the tools in relation to the level he or she is at, and use them to accomplish goals, improve reading and writing skills, and ultimately improve self-esteem.

This chapter is designed to provide tools which people can use to increase their self-esteem. Early in the chapter, learners start to put a tool kit together, and the subsequent activities provide tools which can be added to the kit to help strengthen and empower. Although there are tools common to each kit, the tool kits are to be designed on an individual basis in relation to what is relevant and needed by each person. The tool kit will allow women to move ahead in whatever direction they might want to go - to build, achieve and nourish self-esteem, the "who" we are, and want to be. In the first activities we look at what self-esteem is, how it is formed and how self-esteem affects other areas of our lives. The following activities build self-esteem through the formation of tools which validate the individual and what is important to him or her.

In working with people with low self-esteem it is vital that we know some of what it feels like to suffer from a poor self-image. Instructors must be aware that in the very way they teach, they help raise or lower self-esteem. The introductory activities sensitize people in the classroom to the feelings associated with low self-esteem.