Michael Torchia, President/Founder of the Shape Up Campaign, will be heading down to Washington D.C. to conduct workshops that will seek to educate and certify Girl Scouts as personal fitness trainers. The goal of these workshops is to create thousands of young peer fitness advocates to help stop the increasing levels of obesity among America’s kids.
Torchia and his Shape Up America Campaign Team have spent years educating parents and kids about better fitness and proper nutrition, visiting schools and holding special events to combat the epidemic of childhood obesity in the U.S.
Torchia also sees an added benefit of training Girl Scouts to be certified fitness trainers.
“We have to expose young people at an early age to entrepreneurship and the opportunities and resources that come from it. Entrepreneurship is the impetus needed to create jobs in urban neighborhoods and change the plight of urban decay in major cities. If teens have their own business and it is something they believe in, they most likely going to really work hard at it and it will take them away from all of the negativity in most low income neighborhoods and help keep them out of trouble,” said Torchia.
Health organizations who have already joined forces for the Shape Up America 30-City Tour include: The After-School All-Stars, Boys and Girls Club of America, American Diabetes Association, Alzheimer’s Association, National Fibromyalgia Association, Liver Foundation, American Red Cross, National MS Society, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and American Liver Foundation.
In addition, Torchia will be hosting the Shape Up America Campaign Free Health and Fitness Expo in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, September 25th, 2010. Torchia will debuting his new weapon to combat the obesity epidemic in America at the Washington D.C. event and Girl Scout troops from across the nation will be attending in support of his campaign. There will array of public officials and dignitaries attending this monumental event. This campaign is only the first step in creating a ground-swell of awareness of the dangerously high incidence of obesity taking over our nation.
For additional information on the Shape Up America Campaign and the Girl Scout Teen Entrepreneurship Program, please visit www.operationfitness.com