About Us
Mission:
The Body Positive's mission is to implement educational programs that transform individual and societal beliefs about weight, body image, and identity. The result is a growing national movement of healthy, confident individuals contributing to positive change in the world.
Background:
In 1996, Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, founded The Body Positive because of their shared passion to help people cherish their bodies in order to lead healthier and more meaningful lives. Together, they developed a series of innovative educational materials and workshops to teach people of all ages the common sense tools and creative strategies necessary to become free from body hatred and self-destructive eating and exercise behaviors. The Body Positive works with adults and youth in a variety of settings to support positive body attitudes and self-care behaviors. Some of The Body Positive's clients include: the University of California at Berkeley, Mills College, The Mental Health Association in Illinois, Kaiser Permanente, Clif Bar, San Francisco Unified School District, and Girls, Inc. Since inception, The Body Positive has:
- Directly trained hundreds of high school peer leaders
- Assisted over 1,000 schools and communities in creating their own body image programs based
on The Body Positive's youth leadership model, including 525 school districts in the state of Illinois - Distributed the BodyTalk video series worldwide for viewing by more than a million youth
- Worked with hundreds of college women to enhance their body image and improve
their self-care behaviors - Provided education to thousands of parents to assist them in raising children with healthy body
image and positive relationships to food and exercise
The Body Positive believes that honoring the female body is the final frontier of the women's empowerment movement. Women and girls waste their time, brainpower, and money in desperate attempts to achieve unattainable beauty standards. These same resources can, instead, be put toward the pursuit of balanced health behaviors and activities rich with purpose and meaning.