Tovi Emokpae (Miss Congeniality African Princess-Scotland 2016)

During Brighter Futures Initiative International day of the African child celebration 2018, I was excited when we were given different topics relating to the lives and development of African children. My topic was “The Importance of Self-esteem and Confidence of the African child in a Global Society and how parents can support their children with developing their self-esteem and confidence.” Having become confident in stage presentations since participating in African Princess-Scotland, I was very elated to go up the stage and give it my all and even more excited in my capability as people applauded me following the presentation. However, the key excitement stemmed from the fact that through researching for my presentation, I was able to understand the role self-esteem and confidence plays in our lives as African children to enable us navigate successfully through the global society we find ourselves and how globalisation has made African children vulnerable to the resulting features of globalisation which has created a convergent world where we tend to believe that we must appear in a certain way to please the society resulting in children tampering with their skin colour using dangerous bleaching creams and insisting on using particular hair products which may not be affordable by their parents or which may in fact be as harmful to their skin as the bleaching creams. I now clearly understand that I must be confident in the way I look and do not need to change it for any reason. Thanks to Afro-Scot for providing a great learning experience and this great opportunities to improve my learning, self-esteem and confidence in myself.