Every Body is a Treasure Charitable Trust
It all started with a comment from Mandi Lynn's 5-year-old old niece...
Auntie Mandi?
Yes Harper
Am I fat?
I'm sorry what????!!!!!
Mandi didn't have a great well thought out response to this innocent/ not so innocent inquiry. The women in her family had a history of battling eating disorders and wrestling with body shame and it broke her heart that the signs were now pointing at her niece being the next in line.
So she responded in a not so usual way. She decided to make an exhibition. A photographic exhibition that celebrated the true feminine form in all of its varied shapes and sizes. Real women covered in a golden clay...gilded to represent their value. Not just the narrow bandwidth that culture celebrated in the media. She started the Everybody is a Treasure Project and unwittingly started the beginning of a Mojolution.
The exhibition grew into a body positive workshop for mothers and daughters called "Girls got Grit". To run the workshops Every Body is a Treasure Charitable Trust was formed.
The trusts work grew the workshop into a body positive festival.
The work of the trust was so supportive of girls and women in the community that the New Zealand Film Commission backed a documentary being made about the trusts work, called Finding Venus.
We hadn't even had our first birthday as a trust and we won the Health and Wellness category for our region in the Wellington Community Trust Awards.
Girls Got Grit Forums
If you wanted to boil down what Every Body is a Treasure trust is about it would be simply: Generation Mojo.
Our dream is a generation that never powers down during adolescence. One where they are just as body positive at 18 as they were at 9 (most 9-year-olds rate their body an awesome 9-10 out of 10. ) Currently, 80% of 18-year-olds are not happy in their own skin. But what if we supported girls to reverse this?
This means no wasting of creative energy worrying about thigh gaps but more time shrinking the pay gap. These beautiful souls are focused 100% on bringing their gifts into the world. They are compassionate with themselves and therefore create compassionate communities. The world needs more of this energy.
Generation Mojo is a generation where the women in it treat their bodies as their best friends. And the world at large benefits.
We want Gritty girls with magnificent mojo leading compassionate communities.