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THE PURPOSE
The purpose of the project is to help girls build resiliency so they can resist societal pressures to conform to an arbitrary ‘ideal’ body size. In the training you learn to teach girls skills to strengthen their sense of self and to translate ‘fat talk’ into real talk. This helps girls voice their issues and concerns directly without encoding them in food and weight behaviours. The training will also address media awareness, the dangers of dieting and the bell curve of shapes and sizes.
The Project also contains a train the trainer component that will help build capacity in communities so that many people can reinforce the skills that are taught to the girls.
THE BACKGROUND
Something happens to girls in the process of growing up that makes many of them lose their sense of self and causes them to value themselves in terms of how they look. Until girls are 8 or 9, they are as physically strong or stronger than boys. They can read and write before boys can and they have better social skills. Young girls argue with each other and make up and they have definite opinions which they make sure you hear.
As girls approach puberty there is tremendous pressure on them to be nice —to hold back their feelings and opinions so that they will not hurt anyone else. In a five-year study of 100 girls, eight and nine year olds spoke about themselves and their lives with authority. They began each sentence using the pronoun ‘I’ to take ownership of what they thought and felt. At thirteen these same girls replaced ‘I’ with ‘I don’t know’ and by fifteen responded to questions with “You know.’ In the process of censoring what they thought and felt, girls moved from being the centre of their authority and began to look outward for definition. In doing so, they lost their sense of self and became vulnerable to eating and weight disturbances.
From birth girls are brainwashed by the Body Myth—the societal belief that their self-worth and their worth to others is based on how they look, what they weigh and what they eat. Girls are bombarded with messages that fat is bad and that if they change their bodies they can change their lives. When girls cannot express their thoughts, opinions and feelings directly, they do so indirectly through a negative voice. Many talk about feeling ugly or stupid. Because fat is ‘bad’ in our society, the negative voice is most often centred around ‘fat talk.’ But ‘feeling fat is not a feeling. And fat talk is a language that covers up what they really feel underneath. Focusing on body size becomes a way of turning our concerns about something real and maybe scary on the inside into something artificial on the outside that seems easier to manage. Many girls then deal with the discomfort of ‘feeling fat’ by dieting which is a major risk factor in developing an eating disorder and which contributes to obesity and issues with weight in adulthood.
THE TRAINING (TO TAKE PLACE BETWEEN SEPT & DEC 2006)
First Day – Full Day - Maximum 50 participants
Component One - Professional Training
Training is being offered to teachers, counselors, public health nurses, nutritionists, fitness instructors, child and youth workers, parks and recreation workers, peer counselors/secondary school students, parents and others who work with girls including volunteers who will do presentations in the schools and the community. Everyone attending the training session will be able to integrate the skills into their practice, reinforce the skills and concepts of the program and add appropriate skills and information of their own.
Professional training will address:
· Bio/psycho/social/gender framework of development.
· What happens to girls in the process of growing up that makes them vulnerable to weight and eating disturbances.
· Strengthening girls’ sense of self.
· Decoding ‘fat talk.’
· The dangers of dieting
· Media awareness.
· The Bell Curve of shapes and sizes.
· Implementing skills into your practice.
· Volunteer training.
Component Two - Training Volunteers to do Presentations
The latter part of the day will be devoted to training volunteers how to do presentations that our based on the material and skills they learned in the workshop. The presentation are for girls in elementary school, with groups that involve elementary school girls and young women in secondary school, and/or with adult groups such as PAC.
Participants in the workshop who will not be presenters will have the opportunity to be an enthusiastic audience and to see how to use the skills they have learned.
Presenters do not have to be experts. The presentations are fun and are geared towards the presenter’s experiences.
Presentations will address:
· Strengthening girls’ sense of self.
· Decoding ‘fat talk.’
· The dangers of dieting.
· Media awareness.
· The Bell Curve of shapes and sizes.
Second Day – Half Day/Evening
Community Information Evening
For parents, girls and members of the community to learn about the project and about how to help girls strengthen their sense of self and learn to translate fat talk into real talk. The evening will also provide information about the Loving Yourself Girls Project and how to become involved as a volunteer.
Or
Half day training for peer counsellors to provide them with information about what happens to girls that makes them vulnerable to eating and weight disturbances and to teach skills they can use in their peer counselling.
Train the Trainer Component
Volunteers who have taken the initial training, and have gained experience doing presentations will have the opportunity to train other volunteers in their community. The train the trainer component will take place some time in February 2007. More details to follow at a later date.
THE TRAINER
Sandra Susan Friedman is an educator, counsellor and consultant in eating disorder treatment and prevention. She has extensive experience in facilitating professional training workshops and community education seminars across Canada and in the United States. Her group program Just for Girls has become the prototype for a variety of programs that address the health and social risks facing girls as they grow up. She is the author of When Girls Feel Fat: Helping Girls Through Adolescence, Body Thieves: Help Girls Accept Their Natural Bodies and Become Physically Active, Just for Girls and Nurturing Girlpower: Integrating Eating Disorder Prevention/Intervention Skills Into Your Practice.
THE RESOURCES AND SUPPORT
Support for Volunteer Presenters will be provided through:
· Online forum
· Heather’s blog
· Frequent teleconferences
· Video conference at the end of the project
· Discussion groups
Resources
• Resources for teachers and parents will be developed and distributed so that they can reinforce the skills taught in the presentations.
• Sandra Friedman’s book “Nurturing GirlPower” will be given to volunteers who participate in the Train the Trainer component.
• Prevention resources already posted on Jessie’s Hope website.
THE COMMUNITY’S ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
If you are interested in getting your community involved in Phase II of the project in 2007, please contact our office. We would need the community to commit to:
· Providing and setting up a training locale.
· Providing promotion and advertising.
· Recruiting the participants.
· Providing the audio visual equipment and the photocopying.
· Scheduling and keeping tract of the presentations.
· Community participation in our evaluation process.
Communities Involved in Phase I: (contact our office for specific dates in your community)
Cranbrook
Kimberley
North Island (Comox Valley/Campbell River)
Sunshine Coast (Sechelt)
North Vancouver (North Shore including West Vancouver)
Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows
Vancouver/Richmond
Prince George
Williams Lake
THE OUTCOME
Our goal is for the project to establish a sustainable presence within each participating community.
If you are interested in finding more out about the project, please contact our office.
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