How Dove Kids is Helping Children Feel Good About The Way They Look
Dove Kids research shows that children as young as 5-years-old begin expressing discomfort in their own skin.
Additional research shows that when young girls are not satisfied with the way they look, most of them opt out of fundamental life activities. Twenty percent of them stop attending school, while 30% of them stop participating in class.
Earlier this month, Dove Kids took its mission to help all young people celebrate what makes them unique to heart. It launched the Dove Self-Esteem Project in a three-year partnership with UNICEF. The companies joined forces to help provide some 10 million young people with accessible self-esteem education.
“Over the past eight years working in self-esteem education with Dove, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the generational cycles of low body confidence the young people and the adults who nurture and care for them can experience,” Dove Self-Esteem Project Educator Dre Brown said. “Many of the appearance pressures we now support young people through may look and feel like the very challenges we faced as our younger selves. When confidence tools and healthier body image beliefs are not learned and utilized as children, we can run the risk of lower self-esteem in adulthood.
“Creating resources that can support healthier body confidence in both kids and their parents alike is one way the Dove Self-Esteem Project strives to help end cycles like these.”
DSEP includes a confidence kit to help children establish body positivity, resources for parents, caretakers and mentors, body-confidence workshops and more. A Dove Kids e-book, The Wizard’s Tale: A Magical Journey Celebrating Body Confidence, and activity guide are also embedded into this project; QR codes for the e-book are stamped directly on the Dove Kids Care product bottles, making learning accessible and fun.
The campaign best suits children between the ages of 6 and 9, but there are resources on a range of topics for additional age groups.
“At Dove, we believe that the journey to body confidence and positive self-esteem starts young,” said Sally Brown, the Global Brand Director at Unilever. “To continue our mission to help children develop a positive relationship with the way they look, we worked alongside our Dove Self-Esteem Project expert team develop educational materials that resonate with this specific early age group and teach the valuable life lesson of celebrating our physical differences through a fun and interactive story plot.”
The Wizard’s Tale helps nurture body-confident children. The story helps them understand the pain of teasing others for their differences. The book concludes with discussion points on appearance-based bullying and teasing.
Children engaging in our body image-building resources stand to gain confidence by knowing that their individuality is seen and appreciated.
Dove Self-Esteem Project Educator Dre Brown
“Ensuring that resources for supporting body confidence and self-esteem are inclusive and accessible to any and all children is so important, considering the diverse risks young people face daily in maintaining healthy body image,” Brown said. “Dove research shows that kids as young as 3-years-old can start to build self-esteem when they see themselves positively represented in the world around them. Whether via our experiential DSEP programming or representative imagery in our content and product packaging, children engaging our body image-building resources stand to gain confidence by knowing that their individuality is seen and appreciated.”