Love the Skin You’re In is a nonprofit resiliency and leadership project of the Center for Partnership Systems that inspires young women to think critically about the ways in which the media present bodies, race, sexuality, and self-worth. We lead girls on a dynamic audio-visual journey from self-objectification, fear, and division to self-compassion, empathy, and unity. We bring critical inquiry to the visibility economy generated by social media and invite participants to reclaim their “inner bandwidth” and choose the conversations they entertain inside their minds.

Our girls talks inspire sisterhood over the looks-based competition flooding their Instagram feeds. Our follow-up workshops for boys inspire expressions of tender masculinity and allyship with girls. We introduce the partnership model of social organization, unlinking masculinity from dominance and violence to build cultures of respect and mutual responsibility. Love the Skin You’re In’s mindfulness-based approach to students fortifies mental health, promotes positive self-image, rekindles empathy, and inspires leadership and activism. We have spoken to more than 100,000 students worldwide reminding youth that the most important part of their body is their heart; with this wisdom they can become leaders of a softer world.

Girls Need Resiliency More Than Ever

We are in the midst of a full-blown adolescent girls’ mental health crisis. According to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last month, teen suicides are increasing at an alarming rate. Nearly 60% of young women feel persistently sad and hopeless and one third has seriously contemplated suicide. Poisoning attempts by girls ages 10 to 12 increased 268 percent from 2010 to 2017 (Journal of Pediatrics, May, 2019).

Three times as many 12-to-14 year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007. Girls’ depressive symptoms increased 50% between 2012 and 2015 with feelings of isolation increasing 48% between 2010 and 2015 (Jean Twenge, PhD, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University, author of 130 scientific publications). All of these disturbing statistics have risen steadily beginning with when Facebook acquired Instagram for one billion dollars in 2012 and young women started walking around with slot machines (their phones) in their back pockets.

This mental health crisis among adolescents is happening just as schools in districts across the country are either inequitably or grossly underfunded, leaving them without the necessary resources to help girls find a path back to loving who they are and discovering their intrinsic worth.

The Girls Resiliency Education Fund

While school administrators, counselors, and mental health officials regularly indicate they both want and need the kind of resiliency education Love the Skin You’re In offers, they also regularly make clear that they are too underfunded to bring the project to their students. This is by far the greatest challenge that Love the Skin You’re In faces: the chronic underfunding of our nation’s public school system.

The Girls Resiliency Education Fund will directly ameliorate this challenge. By supporting this fund with a gift, we can offer to bring subsidized Love the Skin You’re In talks and wellness programs to schools across the nation so that students everywhere can benefit from this desperately needed social and emotional resiliency project.

How It Works

Love the Skin You’re In approaches schools across the country and vice versa, assessing their needs for students, whether it be cyberbullying, eating disorders, mean girl culture, cutting, sexual assault, leadership building, gang violence, or conflict intervention.

Any school that confirms they would like to bring the project to their campus and expresses financial barriers has the option to have the talk funded by the Girls Resiliency Education Fund, made possible by the Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation and generous donors.

How to Support the Girls Resiliency Education Fund

Join the Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation in supporting the Girls Resiliency Education Fund with a donation to help bring Love the Skin You’re In to schools across the nation. No matter how big or small, your gift will directly support schools in need by subsidizing Love the Skin You’re In resiliency talks and other programming designed to help girls learn how to stay strong and love themselves and others. Ready to join #TeamGREF? Contact us.

What Girls Say About Love The Skin You’re In

We have thousands of hand-written testimonials from young women sharing the profundity of our impact and our ability to move large audiences of up to 600 girls per talk.