Over the past four years, staff from the Center for Eating Disorders’ Love Your Tree program have traveled to many different places and worked with a variety of organizations on creating Love Your Tree posters and discussing the importance of positive body image in the prevention of eating disorders.  Middle schools, high schools, colleges, and community art centers - Love Your Tree has visited them all and found great enthusiasm for the program at every event. 

But  this past Saturday, September 5th offered a brand new stop on the 2009-2010 Love Your Tree tour – The Maryland Women’s Correctional Facility in Jessup, Maryland.  It is there, in a prison, that approximately 20 female inmates and their daughters meet together twice a month as the collective, Girl Scout Troop 7140.  This troop of mothers and daughters is part of the Beyond Bars program, run by the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland, whose overarching goal is to help girls discover who they are and gain the self-confidence they need to to fulfill their dreams. 

With the understanding that a positive body image can contribute greatly to one’s self-confidence and the knowledge that moms are particularly important to their daughter’s developing body image, the Love Your Tree program ventured into a collaboration with Beyond Bars to provide a body image and creative arts workshop for Troop 7140 and several media outlets were there as well!   Click on the links below to read or watch more about The Center for Eating Disorders’ Love Your Tree workshop and the Girl Scouts’ Beyond Bars program.

Click here to read The Baltimore Sun Article, “Inmates get ‘body image’ lesson: Resist one-size-fits all idea, says official from eating disorders center”

Click here to watch a Fox 5 News report, “Girl Scout Troop Meets in prison”, about the Love Your Tree & Beyond Bars event.

The Love Your Tree program is open to middle, high school and college-aged youth.  Workshops are available to a variety of community organizations and schools through November 2009, and poster submissions are due by December 18th.  Contact Kate Clemmer at (410) 427-3886 to schedule a workshop today!