As the month of November draws to a close, Movember fundraising campaigns are still in full swing. Movember is known for its participants sporting moustaches to raise money for men’s cancer research and health initiatives, but growing facial hair is not the only way to fundraise for men’s health.
Carleton’s Sprott Business Students’ Society (SBSS) is hosting a Movember Pub Night and Shave-Off on Nov. 25, as one last fundraising hurrah before the end of the month. They will be donating 100 per cent of their ticket revenue to the Movember Foundation.
The Movember Foundation has been around since 2003, and has grown to well over five million contributors, according to its website. The money donors raise goes to research for prostate and testicular cancer, as well as mental health and suicide prevention. The foundation’s goal is to reduce the number of men dying too young by 25 per cent by 2030.
Hanna Di Virgilio, the president of the SBSS, said participation in the society’s Movember events has increased recently.
“In previous years, students were not as engaged with SBSS’ Movember initiatives as we would’ve liked them to be,” Di Virgilio said. “As our society started changing and creating additional events that aligned with the interests of students, engagement soared.”
According to her, Sprott’s involvement with Movember has helped to drive awareness.
“Sprott is a large community with high engagement,” Di Virgilio said. “The more Sprott hosts Movember events the more awareness and funding the campaign gets.”
The Carleton Student Engineering Society (CSES) held a bake sale for Movember on Nov. 9, to raise money for the Foundation. Owen MacIntosh and Gabriel Elkadiki, two members of CSES, said that the bake sale event was a success.
“Most of the baked goods were sold, and a lot of people popped in throughout the day,” Elkadiki said.
MacIntosh added that he was also involved in organizing many other events on campus, including a coffeehouse and a patch auction, all to contribute to the Movember Foundation.
Both Elkadiki and MacIntosh are also growing their own facial hair to raise money for the foundation. For MacIntosh, Movember is a way to remember relatives who have passed away from cancer.
Many individual Carleton students are also contributing to the cause. François Morin, a third-year criminology student, said that he has been participating in Movember for years.
“I have been growing my moustache as a way to promote awareness to the cause for as long as I have been able to grow facial hair,” he said.
Morin said that the money he raises will go to the Movember Foundation’s contributions towards research for testicular cancer.
Di Virgilio said she would like to see more campus involvement in Movember fundraising in the years to come.
“Our university is a strong-knit community and we’ve seen in the past how students and faculty can come together to raise copious amounts of money for causes they support,” she said.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
