For many years, we’ve been teaching, mentoring, and bringing life changing Dance, Dance with Literacy, Pilates for Back & Joint Pain & Fall Prevention for Seniors into our communities. Add Balanced Body, the largest Pilates company in the world to the mix, and our new partnership is bringing about change. By leveraging Balanced Body’s world wide network of studios, we're scaling our impact on communities nationally and internationally.
We’re on Cohort #4 building Balanced Body’s Community Expansion Scholarship program. Our Joyful Movement Whole Life Program’s Cohort #1 just finished their second year! Between these two programs, we are training and mentoring 200+ BIPOC, future wellness leaders locally, nationally, and internationally in nine countries.
Impacting Our Communities Locally, Nationally & Internationally.
Diversity In Pilates - Building the Community Expansion Scholarship Program and the Joyful Movement Whole Life Program is a culmination of our life’s work. We’re impacting our communities from the inside out!
GWDC’S ARTS & WELLNESS-BASED WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
The Joyful Movement Whole Life Program is training and mentoring residents from Bay Area disinvested neighborhoods to become audacious movement educators and wellness leaders in their communities.
The 2 year certification course includes National Pilates Certification, in depth anatomy and pain reduction curriculum, dance for non traditional settings, mental health education and counseling with a Black, female psychiatrist, nutrition, financial empowerment, business building, and job placement assistance into well-paid Pilates careers. We support scholarship students through the entire process of training, mentor them for excellence, collaborate with them to develop culturally relevant curriculum with their own special brand of expertise, and deepen their teaching skills in paid internships that bring life changing arts and wellness classes into our neighborhoods.
Whole Life Empowerment
This certification uses the principles of art and wellness to develop holistic, culturally relevant life-skills, financial stability, and community empowerment in residents of underestimated communities of color.
Often overlooked, rooted-in-community folks earn an internationally recognized Pilates certification to build financial stability and bring arts, wellness, fitness, and pain prevention skills into their communities.
Tools for Success
Transforming our Communities
Training will equip graduates with the knowlege to design successful Pilates- based wellness programs for all ages, backgrounds and body types, reduce back and joint pain, decrease falls in seniors, support individuals living with health-challenges, pre/ post natal women, and train athletes to improve performance.
The curriculum creates expertly-trained, front line arts and wellness practitioners that will bring movement and healthy life skills into nontraditional settings, including libraries, shelters, and senior centers in disinvested communities. Through paid internships, students will help infuse neighborhoods with axis-shifting arts and wellness programs.
Financial Stability
Certified Bay Area Pilates Teachers earn $40- $125 per hour. Training will stabilize students’ personal lives, impacting their families and communities.
The program builds better physical and emotional health, help financially vulnerable families stay rooted against gentrification, begin to amass wealth, and create a stronger sense of belonging, wholeness, neighborhood cohesion, and joy.
Healthier families and communities will be able to leverage their collective power for good in their own lives, community and world.
