Imagery from Southampton RAG.
As many of you now wait for the festive season to begin now that Halloween is over, there are just shy of 20,000 students across the UK taking part in Movember, with over 400 alone from the University of Southampton taking part.
The first question I typically get asked as a Movember Ambassador is, well, what exactly is Movember? The simplest answer is that it is a charity focused on all things Men’s health, more specifically mental health, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.
Many people get involved by growing moustaches known as a ‘Mo’ in Australian vernacular, but other popular methods are running, cycling and swimming distances around the number ‘60’ which represents how many male lives are lost to suicide each hour.
Movember have pushed for more women to be involved in fundraising, dubbing them as ‘Mo-sisters’ and encouraging them to take part in physical challenges or raise money in any way they wish.
The reason why I’ve got involved with Movember is because I have faced challenges with my mental health. I have battled anxiety for a large portion of my life, but I faced my greatest challenge a few years ago after a breakdown of a relationship. Many unpleasant things were said that left me suicidal and in a dark place.
I can still remember some of the panic attacks at night and the resulting sleeplessness. I was in therapy for many months and slowly it got better and ‘slowly’ is the key word here because it was not an over night change.
Whilst I am in a much better place now, some of the mental scars and the overthinking, thoughts, and doubts that still sporadically come into my mind, I don’t truly believe will every fully go away.
That is why I want men to be able to speak and reach out when they need help. Asking for help is not giving up, it’s refusing to give up, and that’s why Movember as a charity can be a force for good. There is a whole community of people who want to hear your story and they want to support you.
There are so many projects that Movember give money to in terms of mental health and raising awareness for the aforementioned issues. Much of this work is done through wider mental health campaigns, as well as partnerships within Rugby League and a shirt sponsorship with Hampton & Richmond Borough FC.
We have so many great societies putting on events this month from a zumba charity class to Monte FC’s charity tournament to Sign Langauge co-ordinating their social to take place at the Movember quiz. There are so many more societies and individuals hosting events or doing challenges to raise as much money as they can.
As it stands Southampton RAG (UoS leading fundraising society) has raised over £8,000 with our ultimate target at this time being £30,000, which would surpass last years total of £27,000, and I have great hope that we can pull this off.
