Rebel Inc

Causes: Children & Youth, Youth Development Programs

Mission: Rebel as peer educators in high school: rebel focuses on educating, training, and empowering youth. The program first educates members on eating disorders and body image issues, emphasizing the importance of health and encouraging students to be introspective - evaluating their own thoughts an dfeelings about their appearance. Students are then educated on topics including the prevalence of eating and body image issues, the inefficiency of diets, the impact of negative self-talk and media literacy. After continuous training and education over the course of a year, students become educators and initiators, creating a dissonance-based leadership style and encouraging students to develop their own solutions to problems.

Programs: Rebel as mentors: rebels conducts outreach activities in the middle schools that ar efocused on promoting positive body image at an early age. Current research shows that more than 50% of children between ages 3 and 6 are worried about being fat. The media's influence can be seen early, and by middle school, students are well aware of our culture's definition of beauty and the importance of appearance. To provide an alternative perspective, rebels visit middle schools and give presentation that illustrate the cost of appearance concerns and how these concerns detract from our talent, activities and relationships. Rebels serve as mentors to younger studens and model positive and healthy approaches to eating and body image. High schoo rebel students went through a training program that certified them as storytime outreach presenters and enabled them to effectively convey and education younger elementary students on the importance of positive body image and self love.