A group of University students will encourage junior high girls to be positive about themselves during the Girls on the Run 5K relay Saturday at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Students in associate professor Laura Choate’s girl’s and women’s wellness class will participate for the first time in a University partnership with the Girls on the Run of Greater Baton Rouge. Choate said she contacted the organization after reading about it, and together they devised the idea for University students coming to support the girls.
Girls on the Run is a 10-week program that visits schools, teaching girls the importance of active, healthy lifestyles and the “joy, happiness and confidence” girls can feel about themselves.
Because students in the class learn about problems affecting women’s health and wellness, Choate said the service learning project acts as a tool that brings classroom instruction to life.
“It’s one thing to sit in our classroom and talk about what girls need to hear, but it’s quite another thing to go out and see [it],” Choate said.
She said girls learn to believe in themselves through the program that counters unrealistic portrayals of women in the media.
“Girls today are just bombarded with unrealistic ideals of how they should look and how they should act,” Choate said.
About 25 students, along with other volunteers, will participate in hosting booths for girls to visit after the relay.
The students will also host a post-race pancake breakfast for the runners.
Choate said the booths will offer different activities to boost girls’ self-confidence and teach them to love their bodies.
One booth will allow parents and family members of the girls to write encouraging messages, while another will ask girls to write negative notes about themselves and then throw them away. Other booths will be available for girls to write positive thoughts about themselves.
“We want [girls] to hold onto their authentic selves,” Choate said.
Community counseling graduate student Tenikka Sanders said students in the class brainstormed ideas for booths, and Choate helped decide which ones to create. The groups were divided and assigned specific roles.
Sanders said participating in the booths is important because it shows ways she can help others see themselves in a positive light.
“For me, the most influential thing is how a negative body image affects others,” she said of the opportunity to encourage girls.
Mass communication sophomore Anne Wahlborg, whose mother is the director of the Greater Baton Rouge chapter, was a Girls on the Run coach in the spring 2011 semester.
She said the organization promotes healthy lifestyles and uses running as a tool to teach girls about self-esteem, bullying and respect for their bodies.
After the relay, all donations received go toward funding Girls on the Run scholarships that help girls pay the program’s tuition, Wahlborg said.
“The lessons deal with issues not really talked about in schools,” Wahlborg said.
The organization has been in Baton Rouge since 2008 and at each semester’s end it sponsors a relay for girls. This year there are 23 schools participating, Wahlborg said. ____
Contact Shannon Roberts at [email protected]