Boulder Youth Body Alliance Teams-up with TWWI

By Lindsay Miller, TWWI Community Program Director

The Women's Wilderness Institute and the Boulder Youth Body Alliance embark on their second year of collaboration with TWWI's after-school program for 8th grade girls, Girls on the Rise. BYBA co-facilitates 3 of our after-school sessions which have a specific focus on fostering positive body image and increasing awareness of weight-based stereotypes and promoting size acceptance.

History of BYBA
Boulder Youth Body Alliance (BYBA) is a peer education program which was founded in 2004 by Carmen Cool after meeting a group of passionate high school youth who wanted to do something about the issue of eating problems and body dissatisfaction in their school. These teens, many of whom had personally struggled with their own body image or eating disorder, felt helpless as they watched their peers skip lunch or do drugs before prom in order to drop a dress size. Since its inception, BYBA has trained 73 youth activists from multiple high schools, and, in turn, they have provided direct education to over 4,500 students, teachers and members of their communities. BYBA has become tremendously successful in the past 5 years; most notably receiving the Business of the Year award in 2009 from Boulder Business and Professional Women.

Interview with Carmen Cool (founder of BYBA)

Lindsay Miller: Tell us about your partnership with TWWI. What activities do you do with Girls on the Rise?
Carmen Cool: We explore topics such as prevailing social messages about body image and ways to celebrate our natural bodies. The BYBA leaders answer questions and concerns from the Girls on the Rise participants about high school, and we create YAY scales together - scales that give positive adjectives rather than numbers. We work on supporting each other in feeling good not only about our bodies but about our selves exactly as we are.

LM: How do you think your partnership is mutually beneficial?
CC: BYBA is so excited to partner with GOTR! Our partnership provides an opportunity for BYBA girls to make a positive difference in the lives of younger teens and it inspires GOTR girls to step into future leadership positions and to see the possibilities that exist for high school and beyond. It also provides BYBA an excellent opportunity to fulfill our mission of inspiring a positive body image through peer education, outreach and activism and also ties in nicely to one of the goals of the GOTR Program which is: To help girls foster a positive body image, and positive relationships to their bodies. Bringing together two like minded organizations is powerful in achieving the mutual goal of helping to create Strong girls, Strong Women and a Better World for everyone.

LM: What sets BYBA and Girls on the Rise apart from other programs for
teens?
CC: BYBA is one of the very few organizations in the country that employs creative techniques and peer leadership development to reach youth with alternative messages about weight, health and concepts of beauty. GOTR is unique in its research-based gender specific approach to working with girls and integrating media literacy as a component of the curriculum.

LM: What are your future goals for BYBA and Partnership with Girls on
the Rise and The Women's Wilderness Institute?

CC: In addition to continuing our current collaboration/partnership, we would like to pair up and do 1 on 1 mentoring in the future and combine our efforts to work on service learning and activism projects together.

For more information about TWWI's Girls on the Rise Program, please contact Lindsay Miller, TWWI's Community Program Director. For more information about Boulder Youth Body Alliance contact Carmen Cool