SoulFit teaches young people skills that traditional curricula rarely address systematically. They learn to understand their emotions, find words for what they feel, and communicate what they need. A real subject, taught week after week.
SoulFit is an emotional-literacy programme designed for primary and lower secondary schools. It gives young people the language, the tools, and the practice to understand their emotions, build resilience, and move through life with greater self-awareness and compassion for others.
It is taught as a subject. Not as a one-day workshop. Not as a poster on the wall. A real subject, with its own eight-book curriculum, taught week after week so that emotional skills become as natural as reading.
The curriculum was developed by two mental health professionals, approved by the Directorate of Education (Bildungsdirektion), and endorsed by the World Council for Psychotherapy.
Young people learn the vocabulary of emotions. Before you can manage a feeling, you need a word for it.
They learn what emotions do in the body and the mind, and why they exist. Understanding replaces fear.
Week after week, skills become habits. This is how emotional literacy is built to last.
Emotional skills are not a personality trait. They are not something you are born with or without. They are learnable, the same way reading and maths are learnable. The question is simply whether anyone takes the time to teach them.
Schools are where young people spend most of their lives. They are also where we have the greatest chance to reach every child, regardless of what is happening at home.
SoulFit brings that teaching into the classroom, where it belongs. Not as a crisis intervention. Not as therapy. As education, for every student, every week.
The pilot launches in September 2026 in two Viennese schools, one primary and one lower secondary. This is only the beginning.
SoulFit has eight books, one for each school year from Year 1 to Year 8. Each is built for the exact developmental level of the students using it. Topics are introduced early and revisited with greater depth as students grow. In the primary years the focus is on foundational emotional skills. In the lower secondary years the material covers increasingly serious terrain, the kind of conversations most adults have never had the chance to have. The curriculum is interactive: every session is about practising, not just listening.
SoulFit is part of the normal school week, not a one-off event. Emotional skills are built the way any skill is built, through steady practice over time.
Social-emotional learning is one of the most studied educational interventions in the world. The findings are consistent: it works, it lasts, and the earlier it starts, the better.
When emotional difficulties begin versus when schools address them
Not as a crisis intervention. Not as therapy. As education, for every student, every week.
In July 2025, the World Congress for Psychotherapy brought together practitioners from across the world at Vienna's historic Rathaus.
Dr. Maria Gren and Milica Krstic met there and discussed their work in psychotherapy and mental health advocacy. That exchange became the starting point for SoulFit.
Dr. Maria Gren is a psychotherapist and Secretary General of the World Council for Psychotherapy. She is the founder and director of Psychotherapeutische Ambulanz Wien, her own outpatient psychotherapy clinic in Vienna.
Her academic rigour, clinical depth, and institutional credibility are the foundation on which SoulFit was built. She brings everything she has learned in practice and in the field directly into the curriculum.
Milica Krstic is a psychologist, entrepreneur, author, and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honoree. She is the creator of Safe Space, one of the region's largest grassroots mental health movements, through which thousands of people from underserved communities received free psychotherapy and psychological support, reaching over 30,000 people across 12 languages.
Her work spans clinical practice, social impact, and building initiatives that reach the people who need them most. SoulFit is her most ambitious project yet.
Austria is where we are starting. The rigour of the Austrian education system made it the right place to prove what is possible. What is approved here carries weight everywhere.
Every child should have access to emotional-literacy education regardless of their school's budget. That is why we built the Sponsor a School model.
You sponsor one or more schools for a full academic year. You receive the SoulFit School badge for your communications, and a branded impact report at the end of the year.
The programme arrives fully funded. All materials are provided. All that is needed is the willingness to make room for it in the school week.
An hour each week that teaches them something schools have never taught before, the kind of knowledge that stays with them for life.
This is a measurable investment in the wellbeing and education of the next generation. It is one of the most direct and visible ways a company can demonstrate that commitment.
Emotional literacy is not a luxury. It is not a trend. It is a basic skill that every human being deserves the chance to learn. We are building the infrastructure to make that possible.
SoulFit, because knowing what you feel is the beginning of everything
Whether you are a school director, a company interested in sponsoring, a researcher, or simply someone who believes this matters, we would love to hear from you.
projectsoulfit@gmail.com