Finding the Fabulous

Vital Stats

Lincoln Park, NJ

  • people helped150
  • People Doing It 15

The Problem

92% of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest. 75% of these teenage girls felt depressed, guilty and shameful after spending just three minutes leafing through a fashion magazine. 25% would consider undergoing plastic surgery. And only 2% would describe themselves as beautiful. A severe lack of self-esteem is an extreme issue prevalent among today’s youth. These small seeds of self-doubt are what lead to the suicides, eating disorders and teen pregnancies that are plastered on the headlines of every newspaper. The root of this problem is that 1 in 5 high school girls say they do not know three adults to whom to turn if they have a problem. By the time they are in high school, there is no undoing the damage. The simple reality is not that society is failing to provide role models, but that the standards for being a role model have drastically plummeted. They don’t need a pop song about girl power, they need a reason to value themselves. The community we are looking to target is girls between the ages of 8 and 12, the age range during which girls are most impressionable and looking for guidance as insecurities begin to develop. We plan to initially reach out to girls in our local community and surrounding towns in New Jersey.

Plan of Action

This past summer, we launched a pilot, weeklong summer camp called Finding the Fabulous…In Me, for girls, ages 8-12. Our goal is to use that foundation to expand this year and in the years to come. Though we had amazing, committed volunteers last year, we would now like to focus on building a more permanent team that would take more of an active role in planning the camp as we begin to branch out and expand our venture. Including us, we had 7 full-time counselors between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one and eight additional volunteers who donated their time throughout the week. In addition, we would like to focus our efforts on advertising to make more families aware of what is being offered in their community. For the coming year we would like to advertise through the town that our facility is located in by hanging banners and putting an ad on the town’s television station, as well as distribute flyers in the surrounding middle and elementary schools. Now that we have an idea of what obstacles we may encounter, we will be better equipped in our preparations. Because we received such positive feedback from girls, parents, and volunteers who participated in our pilot, an eventual goal would also be to extend the camp for longer than one week. This month we also hosted our first outreach program with a Girls Scout troop. The girls responded really well and we have been invited back to host another event in May.
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