The nonprofit Global Wellness Day has launched a new project, GWD kids, with an aim to provide breathing, mindfulness and self-love lessons to young children around the world.

The project hopes to get preschools to adopt a five-minute wellness circle each morning, and for elementary and primary schools to add in a one-hour wellness class once a week.

GWD founder Belgin aksoy Berkin said it’s time for those in the wellness industry to take action to help children, especially with rising rates of depression and the growing role of technology in childrens' lives.

“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,” said Aksoy Berkin. “These are things that are very important to being a happy adult in the future.”

Aksoy Berkin is in consultations with an American university to develop the curriculum, and plans to engage her 86 GWD ambassadors around the world to help get it off the ground. She announced the new project at the Global Wellness Summit, where she brought area children on-stage to illustrate the point.

Aksoy said she hopes to get children learning about breathing exercises to improve their health and manage their stress; mindfulness to improve emotional and physical wellbeing; and self-love to let go of shame, anger, and blame, and to feel at peace and accept themselves and others. The project will start with preschool children and grow to include elementary and primary school children down the line.

“It’s very exciting, and there’s so much to do,” said Aksoy Berkin. “It is necessary – it is needed. We have to do something about the kids, and I want to take action. We should have done something about this yesterday.”