Empowering global wellness: Taiwan Excellence invites innovative health proposals

“Go Healthy with Taiwan,” a global contest by Taiwan Excellence in partnership with Anytime Fitness and Growth Circle International, offers a grand prize of US$30,000.

As an initiative to “contribute to a healthier future, where well-being is accessible to all,” Taiwan Excellence — representing Taiwan’s ingenuity in product and technological innovation — is inviting proposals for the “2025 Go Healthy with Taiwan” contest.

Health is a universal aspiration, as it impacts quality of life and influences long-term happiness. Today, both physical and mental well-being are essential priorities.

“No matter your field, we encourage you to propose ideas that integrate Taiwanese products, solutions, or business models to make a real impact on health and well-being in your local communities, cities, businesses, and organizations,” the campaign states.

Six outstanding proposals will be selected from entries worldwide. These finalists will be supported in building partnerships with Taiwanese enterprises to create value through bilateral cooperation. Finalists will also receive an all-expense-paid trip to Taiwan, where they will present and defend their proposals. The top three global winners will each receive US$30,000.

How to enter the contest

Taiwan Excellence has partnered with Anytime Fitness — an American 24-hour health and fitness club franchise — and Growth Circle International, an organization that fosters long-term, meaningful connections among business professionals, for this nationwide call for entries.

The contest is organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council Foundation, Taiwan’s premier nonprofit trade promotion organization, and the Taiwan International Trade Administration (TITA) under Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. TITA is responsible for planning trade policies, engaging in international cooperation, and promoting economic agreements.

Participants may submit proposals via the e-form at https://bit.ly/GoHealthyWithTaiwanSubmission. For inquiries, contact the contest secretariat at gohealthycontestsecretariat@fireballcomms.com. For updates, follow Taiwan Excellence PH on Facebook (facebook.com/TaiwanExcellence.ph).

Deadline for proposals is 14 August.

Supporting institutions include De La Salle University, Ateneo de Manila University, Our Lady of Fatima University and the Local Economic and Investment Promotion Office.

Health and Wellness: The vision of Taiwan Excellence

In a press conference on 29 July at Anytime Fitness Araneta City, Alex Lai, the director of Taiwan Trade Center Manila (TTC), elaborated on the goals of the campaign.

“The main goal is not just health, also wellness. That is what Taiwan Excellence is seeking to encourage. That is, to seek a happier life. So, we believe that through health and also innovation combined together, Taiwan already has some, we call it, technology leading. So, hopefully with the creative ideas, we can just share with the people of our planet. That is our main goal for this year,” he explained.

Promoting health and wellness is important to Taiwan Excellence —hence, the theme of this competition.

“Taiwan Excellence is a multi-year program. In the most recent years, we’ve learned that the interactive is even more meaningful. Which means not just we keep promoting the good of the Taiwanese products, but we like to have more amplification, which is through the creative ideas of the people around the world,” said Lai. “So that’s why this year we are growing up more healthy with Taiwan. Indeed, if you look back last year, we had a similar campaign, which is to ‘Go Green with Taiwan.’ So, we would like to include more creative inputs in our set of activities.”

Taiwan Excellence is open to any health ideas that the contest will come up with.

“Definitely, we can expect some creative ideas, like the commuting bicycle, that could be a good one. And not to mention the food and nutrition. I’m thinking that maybe we can share some common and also healthy diet ways. So, you name it. I mean, even what kind of clothes you are going to equip yourself, just maybe out of the box and bring more good ways to share with our people today. It’s going to be really fun,” Lao assured.

Anytime Fitness eyes integration of contest innovations

Mark de Joya, chief operating officer of Anytime Fitness Asia, highlighted the benefits of entering the proposal contest, noting the one-month free gym membership offered to their member participants.

“Anytime Fitness is very proud to stand by the possibilities when you integrate the best of humanity with the best of technology. Something that you would have seen globally across our other markets is how we have realized that while coaching is probably the most human interaction that you have at the gym, you see the power of technology to augment and integrate that,” he said. “We have embraced new technologies such as how to use artificial intelligence to curate programs for our members, integration with health biometric devices, where these e-ball machines that you see in our clubs are all centralized with someone’s progress on their matrix treadmill made by one as well, by the way. And use this to arm our coaches with better insights, better ways to monitor the progress of their members.”

He explained, “Let me make a picture for you. Imagine a technology augmented world where a member walks into the club. The coaching dashboard automatically pops up from the personal trainer. The personal trainer says, ‘Ma’am, I see that last week you only did get three hours of sleep per night.’ Your heart rate is a bit elevated. Your VO2 is not that great. And you only did get about 2,000 steps per day versus your usual 3,400 steps per day. I think today, let’s focus on stretching and recovery rather than heavy duty weightlifting activities. So, we’re always keeping our eyes open on what technology can do.”

“Because once again, fitness, just the way that we see our members might come to our clubs for a personal coaching session, but they go home to get fitness resources from TikTok, from Instagram, from YouTube, how to train for my next world marathon, how to perfect the form of my Romanian deadlifts,” De Joya said. “We have always embraced technology at the heart of it and we’re keen to see where our partners come up and see how it can become part of our own technology stack as well.”

Supporting the ‘Go Healthy with Taiwan’ campaign

Reymond de los Reyes, the chairman and founder of GCI, said, “We’d like to support ‘Go Healthy with Taiwan.’ First of all, we’d like to, as business owners and as founder of an organization, we’d like to bring in here to the Philippines the best tools in the world, the best equipment in the world, and I believe that they are available in Taiwan. So that’s why we are partnering with ‘Go Healthy with Taiwan’ because we want the Philippines to experience world-class and top-notch quality products from Taiwan.”

Anne Constantino, the senior vice president for operations at Anytime Fitness Asia Corporate, shared her insights: “I believe that this campaign, the difference is it’s not just educating everyone, especially those who are into fitness, but actually capturing ideas coming from those who are active in music, the gym, who’s actually into fitness. And it’s actually very inspirational that you are trying to get that information from those who are active in music rather than just giving it to them. So, I think it’s a big difference.”

“I believe personally it’s important for the whole world to understand that innovation is not necessarily the property of just billionaire-funded big banks. Innovation can be found from every part of the world,” De Joya chimed in. “We ourselves have seen this. And that fitness was one of the best practices that we put into our clubs that have come from our franchisees, from our members themselves. We’ve seen how crowdsourced ingenuity can help make the world a better place.

“That’s why we particularly love this particular campaign. Because it puts that statement first and foremost, the next world-changing innovation that might come from the world itself,” he added.

“I’d say this is more about connect and also interact. I think that’s why we are partnering with Anytime Fitness as well as with GCI and all the creative ideas. That’s what makes ‘Go Healthy with Taiwan’ different from the rest,” Lai emphasized.