Sharmain
I am deeply passionate about wellness as I have direct relationships with many friends and peers experiencing difficult mental health challenges. Seeing their struggle to understand what influences their well-being while trying hard to meet expectations and 'fit in', I believe that the first step to supporting them is to improve general education on mental health.
In my opinion, education is a great equaliser and opportunity for us to balance the scales and help reduce stigma while empowering people with the knowledge and skills to help them to integrate more proactive wellness behaviours into their lives. I co-founded Total Wellness Initiative Singapore (TWIS), a social enterprise that empowers people to take a more holistic and preventive approach to care for their wellness using a ten-dimension wellness framework. As well as running TWIS, I am an organisational development specialist where I create effective work cultures focusing on employee development, well-being and engagement.
My fellowship project, TWIS, allows people to find what wellness means to them and how best to incorporate wellness into their lives. We aim to empower people to take a more holistic and preventive approach to care for their personal wellness.
Our framework includes psychological, physical, spiritual, social, creative, intellectual, environmental, occupational, digital and financial wellness. To improve the awareness and adoption of holistic and preventive well-being practices, we work with organisations and community partners to run various talks, workshops and programs.
Since our inception in February 2022, we have grown to over 150 volunteers, partnered with over 15 schools and more than 35 partners/organisations (including the Institute of Mental Health and National Youth Council), and reached over 2,500 people through our talks, workshops and programs. We have created and shared over 600 pieces of unique content related to wellness and well-being across multiple social media platforms.