Year 2025 in review

The past year has allowed us to bring conversations about the acceptance of different bodies into the wider public. Many people, for the first time in Latvian, heard about weight stigma, body-based prejudice, and fatness in a neutral way. We prepared a great deal of meaningful material and worked hard to grow, both individually and as an organization, so that in the future we can help create even more meaningful change.

What about this year? The work continues!

What did we accomplish in 2025?

Already in January, we launched the project “Raising Awareness of Weight Bias in Latvia”, supported by the Society Integration Foundation (SIF) NGO Fund. As part of the project, we prepared and published the research study “Fatness in Latvia” about experiences of weight stigma in Latvia, and implemented activities to raise awareness in the wider public.

To provide information and support, we also created the website resnums.lv, which includes information about mental health support resources for people who experience weight stigma or hate speech, as well as other useful materials.

By sharing different types of content, we also ran an online campaign in Latvian on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. By the end of the project in October, the campaign had reached around 68,000 views (and continues to grow), and people had commented, shared, and clicked “like” more than 1,700 times in total. The campaign also included three infographics on how to seek help in situations of weight and size discrimination. As a result, the organization’s total number of online followers grew by about 240 people across all platforms.

Within the same project, we also created the podcast “Fatness in Latvia” with six episodes, which had already been listened to 667 times by the end of the year. One of the episodes was recorded at our first large public event, the discussion “Is Fatness Really the Worst Thing That Can Happen to Us?” at the LAMPA festival. We were glad to receive positive feedback that this topic truly resonates with people.

As part of the project “Microlearning for Body Liberation”, we met with project partners in Poznań to create content for an online campaign. As a result, we organized an English-language online campaign that reached at least 70,000 views. Within this project, we also helped write, translate, and publish the educational material “Own It: Body Liberation Microlearning With Young People” for youth workers and other interested audiences about including bodies of different sizes in youth work. A particularly heartwarming moment was the project results presentation event in October, the screening of the film “Your Fat Friend” at Kaņepes Culture Centre.

Within the project “EQ Cultivate”, we hosted international partners in Latvia in May for a one-day visit to discuss upcoming tasks and progress already achieved.

In September, we launched the Erasmus+ project “Body Liberation for Gender Equality”. As part of it, a visit with project partners took place in Cyprus, and a survey was launched to explore young women’s experiences with body image.

In addition to project activities, we published four educational articles on our website about weight stigma, the fat acceptance movement, and related topics. At the same time, Ieva Miltiņa participated in conversations and interviews on the podcast Intersekcionalitātes istaba and on Instagram with Hildegarde Graumane, also sharing the organization’s work and key insights.

Throughout the year, we submitted several project applications to Erasmus+, the SIF NGO Fund, Yogi Foundation, and others. Unfortunately, none of them were approved, but we are planning new projects for 2026. One particularly exciting opportunity was participating in the preparation of an international Horizon program project proposal aimed at developing solutions to reduce eating disorders. This project is currently in the evaluation phase.

We are also pleased to continue influencing policy change. The recommendations included in the “Action Plan to Reduce the Increase of Overweight and Obesity 2025–2029”, which we began working on in 2024, were approved. In 2025, after several rounds of discussion, the plan was submitted for budget approval.

What are the plans for 2026?

The foundation for the organization’s future years will be our newly developed action strategy. In the coming year, we plan to find ways to expand this strategy to inform the medical sector, as well as to work more purposefully on community building. In addition to long-term plans, we will discuss and plan opportunities for organizing in-person events. We are also considering creating an online section called the “Fatness Library” to highlight the most important books on fatness and body liberation.