Shape Your Life

The goal of this project is to use the activity of boxing to assist women and transgendered survivors of violence to develop a healthy body image and to develop a plan for achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

The project is a team project with Opportunity For Advancement, a non profit organization providing programs and service to help women and transgendered people, and the Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club, the first and only all women's boxing club in Canada.

The project will incorporate a strong mentoring component that will enable women to contribute to their communities by being able to support other women through the early stages of the program. In addition, women with an interest in remaining with the project will be able to go further and train to achieve their coaching certificates and will allow women to bring their learning into their own communities. Through this project, women that are isolated from their communities will be able to reconnect with their communities and will re-engage with activities that will increase self-esteem and civic engagement.

Programs for women and transgendered survivors of violence typically focus on more traditional methods of recovery. The projects for women that facilitate a physical form of building self esteem also traditionally are built within the context of self defense.

Shape Your Life is most unique as it not focused on self defense but rather on developing a healthy notion of one's own body and one's own abilities to be present in our bodies. Program based on boxing for men are widely available and are widely accepted as a worthwhile way for men to recover from a wide range of issues. However, there are no programs that offer women the same options.

Shape Your Life would also challenge old stereotypes that women can't benefit from participating in the activity of boxing.