Thanks to a program founded by a UA senior, sixth to eighth grade girls are getting a boost to their physical, mental, social and spiritual health.
Jackie Parks, a senior majoring in biology and founder of the Beautiful Health program, said she came up with the idea while working with the UA Project Health initiative.
“At our annual Project Health fall retreat in 2008, I heard a speaker from the Women’s Resource Center come speak … about college women and the self-esteem issues they are facing today,” Parks said.
“Many of these issues dealt with negative body image. As I was listening to this speaker, I kept asking myself how this type of negative self-concept be avoided. From there, I signed up for an Honors College independent study class where I researched these issues.”
Every Thursday at 4 p.m., Parks delivers a speech to a group of about 20 girls at Hillcrest Middle School about the overall message for the day will be, and then the girls split into groups of two to four per mentor, based on grade and the girls’ preferences. The mentors then help them to complete the week’s activity.
For example, Parks said last week and this week the focus is on mental health, so she and the rest of the mentors created their own “weird lists” and then asked the girls to do the same.
“I wanted [the girls] to look at ‘weird’ as being a positive word rather than a negative one,” she said. “This was fun because many girls were able to share and laugh at their differences.”
With the help of her adviser, Michelle Harcrow, Parks said she researched how much peer and family influences affect children’s self esteem.
“I found that in order to target this issue with college women, we must begin at the beginning stages of when females develop their self-esteem most strongly,” she said.
“Although girls are influenced from the time they are born about how they ‘should’ feel about themselves, there is no doubt that the peer pressures and family pressures begin to get stronger around the middle school age,” Parks added.
Once the program was developed and approved by Tuscaloosa’s One Place program, Parks said she recruited and trained college-aged women to mentor some of Hillcrest’s students over a 15-week period that began in January.
Tuscaloosa’s One Place has afterschool programs all over the city and backs Beautiful Health.
Dorothy Robinson, a senior majoring in Spanish and a mentor for Beautiful Health, said she has always tried to mentor to girls in her hometown, like those who attend church with her.
“You don’t necessarily have to be in a mentoring program to be a mentor,” Robinson said. “It’s just always being on my P’s and Q’s knowing that someone else is watching.”
Robinson said Beautiful Health is also beneficial to her, not just the girls.
“I’ve always been a confident person, but it’s always good to hear it from someone else, too,” she said. “[The mentors] learn from these girls as well, because they’re living in a different time than we did. Middle school issues now aren’t necessarily the same ones I dealt with when I was their age.”
Lacy Brown, a sophomore majoring in general health studies and a mentor with the program, said she would’ve liked to be a part of a similar program when she was in middle school.
“I wanted to [mentor] because I remember being in middle school—that awkward phase where your mom tells you you’re pretty, but you know she has to,” Brown said. “I wish I had had someone to tell me that I didn’t have to wear same clothes and do my make up the same as everyone else.”
