Getting Hairy to Support Movember

Aspeq Limited were proud to support the Movember Foundation throughout the recent month (previously known as November) and as a team raised over $4,000 to go towards men’s health.

The Movember Foundation promotes fundraising throughout the whole month to support various men’s health projects, but mainly prostate and testicular cancer as well as mental health and suicide prevention. It is the only charity globally who solely supports men’s health, and since it’s humble beginnings in 2003, it has raised over $919 million through its 5 million+ supporters. It has distributed this to over 1,200 projects and continues to grow each year.

Aspeq got on board again this year with various fundraising activities including collecting donations via a moustached money tin, selling morning tea and lunch items, guessing how many lollies were in a jar, sharing winnings from sweepstakes, a movie fundraiser, and the CEO offering to shave half his beard for a day if a certain amount was raised - which it was! As well as these activities, donations were made directly to the team and its members’ Movember spaces. In total (at the time of writing this article) $2,026 was collected and this kept growing. Bruce Heesterman, Aspeq Chief Executive, committed at the start of the month to the company matching anything the team raised up to $2,000.00, and this then made up the grand total of $4,026.

The health issues that the Movember Foundation supports have touched the lives of many and this is shown in people’s willingness to back the fundraising attempts that were held all over the globe.

Some facts about what Movember was created to help with are:

-          Men, on average, die six years earlier than women.

-          Prostate cancer rates will double in the next 15 years, but it currently kills 45 men every hour. It is the second most common cancer in men and by 2030 there’ll be 1.7 million men living with it.

-          Testicular cancer rates have already doubled in the last 50 years. It strikes early and is the most common cancer in men under 40, with those getting it being anywhere between 15 and 40 years old.

-          Three quarters of suicides are men – more than 500,000 men take their own life every year – that is one life gone every minute.

From 30 Aussie Mo Bros in 2003 coming up with a simple idea (but not raising any money), to over 5 million Mo Bros and Mo Sistas raising $919 million and funding 1,200 men’s health projects to date, the Movember Foundation is uniquely placed to address the crisis at a global level. They’re funding ground-breaking programmes all over the world, engaging with men where they are, to understand what works best, to help make change happen sooner.

The foundation’s main goals are, by 2030, to halve the life expectancy gap between men and women and to reduce the number of men dying prematurely by 25%.

Get talking – get clued up – get tested. To learn more about Movember, we highly recommend heading over to their website: www.Movember.com.