Bringing body confidence education to US schools

Dear Friend,

Today’s young people are spending more than eight each day on their phones and computers. They have ample opportunity to compare their appearance to edited and filtered images of people they see on their social media sites. It is not surprising that 77% of adolescents report “body image distress,” feeling dissatisfied with their own appearance. We know that having a negative perception of their bodies leads to serious mental health consequences such as eating disorders, depression, isolation, anxiety, risky sexual behavior, substance abuse, and low self-esteem.

BE REAL is committed to spreading body confidence resources to young people. We have evidence-based workshops for adults and curricula for youth that are designed to help children develop a healthy relationship to food and their body.

BE REAL has had a crazy-busy year so far. Your donations have made it possible for more students, teachers, and parents to have access to our resources. We will continue to use this funding to keep these resources free for those who need them. 

Some of the projects we are currently working on include: 

• Be Real’s BodyKind high school, body image curriculum is now available. It isready to be used by teachers across the country. We are testing this curriculum in Ireland the fall of 2023 in 37 schools. We are working with school systems and eating disorder non-profits in Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Rhode Island, Oregon, and Minnesota on bringing Body Confident Schools to their communities.
• Spreading our Body Confident Schools (BCS) workshops around the U.S and Canada via our Be Real Ambassador program. Body Confident Schools is a workshop that educates educators and parents about the best ways to create body confident environments for students. We’ve given the Body Confident Schools presentation to over 5000 adults as of June 2023.
• BE REAL’s Don’t Weigh Me in School Campaign went viral. In just a single week, our campaign collected over 25,000 signatures. This remarkable response highlights the widespread agreement that using BMI as a metric to assess the health status of students is deeply flawed. It serves no beneficial purpose within our educational institutions.

Thank you for your past support at GlobalGiving. We could use your help now more than ever to distribute BodyKind to high schools all over the country!

Confidently yours,

Denise Hamburger