I travel far and wide when it comes to advancing my knowledge database and gaining new perspective on skincare education. And of course, I can never say no to visiting Sweden, or as I like to call it, “The Venice of the North.”
I attended the 59th Annual CIDESCO World Congress in Stockholm, Sweden this past week as a Chairman of CIDESCO for the USA. The purpose was a school meeting; CIDESCO currently has over 240 schools throughout the world and around 100 or more participated. The day was spent going over exact procedures and testing. It was a good exchange and we spent a great deal of time in a general session with a delegates meeting, addressing the need for better public relations and global communication.
CIDESCO graduates over 5,500 CIDESCO diploma holders on an annual basis throughout the world, so if you think about it in a five year period there are over 25,000 CIDESCO diploma holders globally. There is a great deal of need for creating better internet communication to provide that community with means of communicating and talking with each other and staying in touch. Hopefully, CIDESCO as an organization will move toward accomplishing those goals.
In the US, we certainly still have challenges with our state laws and regulations. My concept is to open up and provide more schools an opportunity to teach a post graduate course and a prep course to prepare students for the CIDESCO exam and open it up to more schools in the US to be able to provide this opportunity. When you think about it, in California alone, there are over 38,000 licensed estheticians and very few of them are CIDESCO diploma holders. There is a great deal of opportunity to improve that! My goal and objective for the US is to help the schools that want to offer a preparatory course and advanced courses to prepare post graduate students to take the exam. This will hopefully lead to membership growth in the US.
Overall, each of us left with positive feedback from CIDESCO members of the world. Together, we are looking toward a bright future and more CIDESCO diploma holders, resulting in an overall upgrade to the skincare industry.
For more information on CIDESCO, visit www.CIDESCO.com.
