Community Outreach Plans
We are committed to a Stress Free Community Program primarily comprised of mentoring outreach based upon the core practice of deep diaphragmatic breathing. Depending upon the availability of resources, we at present intend to serve the following groups in our local community of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario in Canada:
- Women who are pregnant or considering pregnancy: The goal of this outreach program is to relate with the health and wellness mentoring of this part of our community in the interest of the women and their future offspring. The rationale for this program comes from a technical report of the American Association of Pediatrics entitled The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress. This report draws attention to the dire consequences of toxic stress experienced prenatally and in early childhood. This need is urgent and is not limited to our community only.
- University and High School Students: There are a number of recent publications (Time, Maclean's ) pointing to stress and mental health problems in the student communities. We can help students in setting up peer group stress resilience programs at the universities, college and schools in our respective communities.
- Community-at-large: Under this program, we plan to organize to help members of our community in creating stress resilience for health and wellness. Statistics Canada in the 2013-14 two year period estimates that 24.5% of Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo population above the age of 15 perceived quite a lot of life stress. Other communities are not faring much better.