4 Out of 5 Black Women Are Overweight. This Group Has the Solution.

To encourage more Black people to explore outdoors, individuals and organizations in Colorado are working to address underlying barriers such as access to transportation and gear, as well as fear and concerns of safety. Despite the groups still encountering "frustrating" incidents with other outdoor recreationalists, the movement has spread to other states and steadily attracted a growing community of members.

Women of Winter helps train women of color to become professional ski instructors and make the sport more accessible and diversified. Women from across the country come to join the program, receiving a sense of community and access to scholarships to attend events to further their education and experience.

To better serve all communities and increase safety for families, the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation is offering free swim lessons at community pools. Building off of the success of University of Pennsylvania's We Can Swim summer program which offers lessons to "Philadelphia children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to learn," the idea has already been deemed a success given the enrollment numbers.

An all-girls football team is challenging gender stereotypes and empowering their teenage players in the process. An international NGO named Magic Bus teamed up with a Mumbai-based women's collective named Parcham to find girls and parents willing to participate. After a slow start, the group now has a healthy number of players who are also both Muslim and Hindu. The process of becoming confident taking up public space and the fight to claim their spot back from the boys have given the girls more confidence, and parents are now highly supportive of their daughters.

The Youngstars Foundation shares booklets with young girls of stories about women who have succeeded in their careers to inspire them to find a new sense of confidence and establish their own ambitious career goals. Between 2017 and 2019, 5,000 booklets were distributed to 4,500 young girls across 36 states. The Foundation also has an online module for the program, which over 18,000 young women and girls have signed up for.

In the United States, the incarcerated feel like they have no voices and their mistakes that led them to jail go unacknowledged. A documentary film spotlights the IF Project, a writing program that encourages female inmates and recently released felons to write down what they would have done to change the path they went on. With police and teachers as mentors, the convicted have support transitioning into society and can reflect on what they can do to change their lives for the better.

Girls in India are sometimes forced into the prospects of child marriage, prostitution, or slave labor; alternatively, families often teach girls to be wives and mothers. To empower girls to make their own choices, Yuwa, an NGO based in India, introduces girls to sports for social development. Yuwa also promotes educational workshops for girls, where girls can discuss women’s rights and their thoughts about their own bodies.

Connecticut is attempting to reduce prison recidivism by changing parole practices. Changes to the system are allowing parole officers to foster relationships with parolees and counsel them as people, not as cases.

SeaSisters offers free swim and surf lessons to local women and girls, challenging social norms and fear that traditionally keep them from enjoying the ocean. The group has since trained 150 participants, helping them overcome their fears and find a newfound sense of freedom.

A mountain bike riding series for women at Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor is making the sport more accessible by giving new and returning riders the chance to hone their skills with other women on closed trails.