Big business and charity team up to Love Your Body

Media Release

Big business and charity team up to Love Your Body

Global childrenswear brand Pumpkin Patch on the Love Your Body wave

September 10 2009

Mums can teach their children how to love their bodies. That’s the message leading childrenswear label Pumpkin Patch wants to get out there via its new partnership with EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign.

“Pumpkin Patch is proud to be aligned with a campaign that helps increase awareness and raise funds for this growing social issue,” says Pumpkin Patch General Manager of Marketing, Kate Tattersfield. “New Zealand families and schools are increasingly being confronted with body-image issues, and at ever-decreasing ages.”

As part of a nationwide in-store campaign, Pumpkin Patch will operate a point-of-sale, round-up electronic donation programme for EDEN (the Eating Difficulties Education Network) in 60 stores for the month of October. Online and print publication Patchworld will provide information to parents regarding EDEN, body image and health promotion.

“With many of our Pumpkin Patch staff and our customers, of course, being parents, we want to assist organisations, such as EDEN, to help families raise happy kids,” says Tattersfield. “We hope that by supporting an event such as this we will be able to promote the concepts of ‘loving your body’, and ‘letting kids be kids’, along with providing increased community awareness of both the issue and the support networks available for families and schools to deal with it.”

Since Pumpkin Patch began with a mail order catalogue and the opening of one retail store in 1991, it has bourgeoned into Australasia’s leading children’s fashion company. With over 200 stores globally, it’s trading in over 500 retail locations in 17 countries, predominantly in New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Middle East, Asia and South Africa.

Pumpkin Patch is committed to supporting the community through its focus on child-related charities and is involved at the local level with many schools and kindergartens, fundraising fashion parades and other events.

On its third birthday, EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign is rapidly growing in support and recognition nationwide. “New Zealanders agree that it’s unacceptable that 80 per cent of New Zealand women are dissatisfied with their bodies, and that up to one in five struggle with disordered eating,” says EDEN Agency Manager Dr Maree Burns.

“In a society which idealises thinness, EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign is a rare opportunity to celebrate and appreciate our bodies as they are, and to acknowledge the beauty of all body shapes and sizes. Body satisfaction and appreciation are key ingredients for building positive body image and self esteem, which in turn help guard against the development of eating difficulties,” says Burns.

Every dollar raised from EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign will go towards the charity’s early-intervention and prevention services for disordered eating. EDEN (the Eating Difficulties Education Network) is the only specialist NGO provider offering these services in the North Island and (as the government allocates no funding to early intervention or prevention) it receives no public funding for this work. As well as providing information, services and resources to individuals and organisations, EDEN works at a wider social level to promote body trust and satisfaction and size diversity. The agency has been in operation since 1990.

For more information about EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign go to www.eden.org.nz.

*Please refer to this campaign always as “EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign”.

EDEN’s Love Your Body Campaign 2009

www.eden.org.nz

ENDS

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