Global Wellness Day Launches New Project for Children

Nov 8th, 2017

Global Wellness Day, an entirely not-for-profit, volunteer social event held in 100 different countries each year on the second Saturday in June to raise awareness towards living well — is announcing a special focus on children in 2018. The GWD Kids Project has a goal of implementing five-minute wellness circle time at preschools around the world each morning and one-hour wellness class at elementary schools once a week.

In consultation with the reputable universities, clinics and international wellness leaders, the curriculum will be focusing on three different concepts; Self-Love, Breathing, Mindfulness and children will be learning about breathing exercises to improve their health and manage their stress; about mindfulness(from healthy eating to nature walks) to improve their emotional and physical wellbeing; and about self-love to let go of shame, anger, blame and to feel at peace, learning to accept themselves and others.

Global Wellness Day Founder, Belgin Aksoy Berkin, owner of Turkey’s only destination spa and mother of a 15-year-old, announced the project at the Global Wellness Summit in Palm Beach, Florida on October 10, 2017, with GWD Ambassadors and 40 kids joining her on stage.

“Can a two-year-old change the crime rate in the world?” Aksoy Berkin asked. “We go to school from the age of two, hoping that the education system is going to help prepare us for our future, but nobody is teaching us how to live, how to breathe, how to be mindful and how to love ourselves as these are things that are essential to be a happy adult in the future. Kids never learn in schools the fact that people can’t love others without loving themselves first. We believe that focusing on physical and mental wellness at such an early age is so important that it can even help decrease the worldwide depression and obesity rates, even crime rates.”

“It’s time for those in the wellness industry to take action,” she added, “ in an era where global consumer culture is mostly damaging the concept of childhood and raise unhappy and unsatisfied kid consumers. With the GWD Kids project, children will learn how to integrate wellness into their lives on a daily basis and to carry on those practices throughout their lives.”

Aksoy Berkin plans to engage Global Wellness Day’s 86 volunteer ambassadors around the world to help get this new Kids Project off the ground.

About Global Wellness Day: The idea of setting aside the second Saturday of June to provide complimentary, educational and experiential wellness activities to the public to promote good physical and mental health was the brainchild of Belgin Aksoy Berkin, herself a cancer survivor. Global Wellness Day was quickly embraced by the wellness industry and, amazingly, only two years after its 2014 worldwide launch, GWD was celebrated in 100 different countries at over 4,000 locations!

International governmental institutions, mayors and associations have rallied to support GWD in places like India, the U.S., Canada, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Mexico, Costa Rica, Aruba, Turkey, Serbia and Brazil. Over the past few years, Global Wellness Day received the support of Hollywood stars such as Ving Rhames, Josh Charles, Ty Burrell, Jessie Taylor Ferguson, Mayim Bialik, Joe Morton; authors such as Deepak Chopra and Agapi Stassinopoulos, sports stars such as Venus Williams and Rainbeau Mars and leaders of the business world including Founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson, co-creator of SKYPE, Jonas Kjellberg and Wendy Kopp, CEO / Co-Founder of Teach for All. Look for the hashtag #GlobalWellnessDay to follow what happens from one end of the world to the other on Saturday, June 9, 2018.