The Body Positive's Youth Leadership Training Program

I have been a peer educator for The Body Positive for ten years. The Body Positive staff will come to your school for one day to train a team of youth leaders and adult coordinators. In this training we will teach The Body Positive Intuitive HealthTM Model’s four core competencies. We will examine cultural and familial messages about health and beauty, and teach participants how they can become experts of their own bodies by practicing intuitive eating and exercise. Participants will learn tools for cultivating compassion for themselves and others, and the importance of creating a supportive Body Positive community. The training will include creative activities to allow participants to explore their own personal experiences. The day concludes with program planning, including teaching the peer leaders how to use The Body Positive educational materials, and how to present the information most effectively to their peers. The Body Positive was founded in 1996 to address eating problems in children and teens. Since founding the organization, we have directly trained 500 hundred Body Positive teen leaders, assisted more than 1,000 high schools in creating their own Body Positive programs, and provided education to more than 1,000 parents to support them in helping their children create positive relationships with their bodies, eating, and exercise. Additionally, we have produced and distributed our BodyTalk DVD series for grades 1-12 worldwide (viewed by more than a million youth), and have provided expert consultation and training to 3,500 medical and mental health care providers. In 2009, in response to a groundswell of interest from college women nationwide, we initiated a pilot program to create Body Positive college campuses across the U.S.