Author: Sterling Ta’Bon, Healthy Schools Manager & National Cadre Coordinator
This year’s Dove Self-Esteem Project (DSEP) Cadre Retreat, themed “Pride in the Vibe DSEP 2025,” empowered our cadre trainers to effectively share comprehensive lessons while exploring body confidence and self-esteem through historical perspectives. This highly anticipated annual retreat brings together educators, counselors, and administrators from across the country, each serving as their state’s local representative for the Dove Self-Esteem Project. By equipping our cadre with essential tools, language, and community connections, we accelerated their ability to connect educators with Dove’s impactful lessons and activities. Each session, roundtable, and activity was intentionally chosen to grow and expand the possibilities of comprehensive skill-based learning within school communities. We leaned into our reason – the “why” of our work – reflecting on the past while planning where we are headed.
Building Community Across the Nation
Creating a nationwide community presents challenges, but the benefits and connections formed are immeasurable. Our annual regional presentations are a crowd favorite and highlight the professionalism and outstanding teaching abilities of our cadre. Our cadre is organized into geographical regions, with each region randomly assigned a decade to present. Teams delivered engaging 20-minute presentations exploring the culture, lifestyle, policies, and influential figures that shaped their assigned decade’s approach to body confidence and self-esteem. These regional presentations proved invaluable for both cadre collaboration and knowledge sharing.
We journeyed through time from the 1920s to the 2000s, examining practices that encouraged body confidence alongside those that created societal norms, barriers, and inequalities around self-esteem. This historical reflection helped us chart a path forward for a new generation navigating challenges inherited from previous eras.
Dove: Refining and Refreshing
Unilever’s Hemaly Valerio provided a renewing message and the updated visual look to the Dove Self-Esteem curriculum and programs. Highlighting images of all students in natural reactions and emotions, moving away from staged placements. We also learned about October 10th’s Dove Day, a transformative 45-minute virtual session, designed to help students aged 8-14 years old build the body confidence they need to reach their full potential.
Interactive Engagement and Team Building
Throughout the retreat, interactive activities like Find Someone Who and DSEP Music Bingo encouraged cadre members to open up, share their lived experiences and perspectives, and strengthen bonds with one another and our shared mission. Cadre trainers Reisa Rudman (KS) and Scott Prystaz (MI) led dynamic energizers that got the group moving and collaborating to achieve meaningful outcomes.
Roundtable and Sessions: Deep Dive Discussions
Our roundtable format featured four 15-minute stations, each offering focused discussions with facilitators who guided participants through thought-provoking prompts and gathered valuable feedback:
- Station 1: “One Thing Every Young Person Should Hear About Their Body” This station provided space for cadre trainers to reflect and share insights as reliable, well-informed advocates for body confidence.
- Station 2: Podcast and Social Media Led by Drew Miller (NY) and Britnee Weatherspoon (VA), this station focused on leveraging social media to share DSEP materials while maintaining media literacy and cultural competence.
- Station 3: Personal Storytelling Facilitated by Gaige, Cairn Guidance’s Executive Assistant, this station helped cadre members tailor their individual stories when promoting DSEP resources.
- Station 4: “In a DSEP World” COO Samantha Lowe facilitated this creative station, challenging cadre trainers to design programs or initiatives that would enhance students’ confidence in themselves and others.
These roundtables served a dual purpose: assessing the cadre’s needs while fostering creativity and willingness to expand expertise in body confidence and self-esteem curricula and resources. These conversations were archived and presented to the Dove Brand as insights from the educational perspective.
Susan Elswick (TN) and Aundrea Johnson (MO) lead a well informed session on how DSEP lessons and activities align to the multi-tiered systems that counselors uphold, as well as its connection to the National Health Education Standards. The purpose of this session and activity was to best articulate how DSEP programs, lessons and activities fit within the frameworks of counselors and health education professionals. After the presentation, Sterling and Samantha from Cairn Guidance provided a gallery walk of the eight National Health Education standards. Cadre members highlighted where the programs and activities would best align with the National Health Education Standards. This activity not only sharpened the cadre’s ability to meet the needs of educators, it also highlighted potential gaps that should be explored.
Leave a Reply