Our Movember Success!
Every November, men across the UK take on the task of Movember - growing a moustache to raise awareness for men's health issues including testicular cancer, mental health, and suicide. This year we teamed up with our JMSU student groups and students to collectively support the campaign. To date, through moustaches grown, connections created, and conversations generated, JMSU has been able to raise over £5,500 for Movember! 🙌
We put on a huge range of events and campaigns to raise money and awareness for men’s mental health, from our online Movember quiz that over 50 students attended to our Men’s Mental Health talk in collaboration with Talk Liverpool and LFC Foundation. Our Movember effort has been supported by 11 clubs, societies, and groups, with over 100 students participating from Women’s Hockey to the Literature Society. Students also committed to running or walking 60km over the month, which was 60km for the 60 men we lose to suicide each hour, every hour across the world. In total, a staggering 2007.8km was covered during November 👏 🏃.
Along with growing and grooming moustaches or beards this month, we understood that raising awareness was just as important as raising money, so we teamed up with some of our incredible students to create a video campaign highlighting these issues. Opening up can be hard, but it's crucial for men to start talking about their mental health and it's so important that we're there to listen when they do. 5 of our male students agreed to open up and discuss on camera their mental health journey, including their experiences, how they manage it and how to seek help. The full video can be found here. 🎥
Awareness months like Movember also encourages all students to share helpful feedback. Here are just a few things that we've learnt that we can support our students with over the next couple of months:
- Students agree that sports help to improve mental health.
- Students who identify as male are less likely to seek help from the Wellbeing Team. JMSU are going to work with LJMU and incorporate effort to change this into our Wellbeing Action Plan.
- Students agree and think there is a stigma around mental health within sports. JMSU will look at enhancing training for our student leaders to develop wellbeing support for all of our members.
Take a look below at the incredible efforts shown by our MMA Society to raise vital funds and awareness for Movember!
Emily, VP Activities said “I am so proud of the students, sports and societies who threw themselves into raising awareness and money for such an important cause. We have learnt a lot and we now want to continue to make positive change for men’s mental health”
JMSU will continue to build on this momentum and host more wellbeing events throughout the year. We are still raising money throughout the year and can donate here!
