Over the course of November, the “Movember” spirit has been strong on Laurier’s Waterloo campus.
A global movement devoted to raising awareness and funding for Men’s testicular and prostate cancer, as well as men’s mental health and suicide prevention, Movember lasts the duration of the month of November and encourages men to grow out their facial hair to draw awareness to the cause.
“I feel like it’s such an important movement itself, that everyone around campus, especially within business, can connect to, man or woman, whatever you identify with, everyone has some part of their life that has been touched by Movember,” said Sam Hall, Movember Campaign Chair for the Lazaridis Students Society.
The Lazaridis Students Society — or LazSoc — has a strong involvement with the Movember movement and has its own committee devoted to the organization of Movember events.
“Recognizing it as an actual committee in separation from day-to-day club activities really helps strengthen the impression that is has on the community within Laurier, and also really helps us drive across the message through marketing and stuff like that, raising awareness for Movember itself,” Hall said.
In addition to LazSoc, a variety of campus clubs have joined in hosting Movember themed events, with more closing events to come in the last few days of the month. More detailed information on these upcoming events can be found on The Perch website.
“So, we had some smaller events to start already. There’s a few Movember initiatives around Laurier — we did a bridging the gap night which happened, and it was a speak up [which took place] in Wilfs,” Hall said.
“This week we actually have two events coming up, which are our main flagship events to end off the month of Movember.”
Recognizing it as an actual committee in separation from day-to-day club activities really helps strengthen the impression that is has on the community within Laurier, and also really helps us drive across the message through marketing and stuff like that, raising awareness for Movember itself.
– Sam Hall, Movember Campaign Chair for the Lazaridis Students Society
“This Wednesday we have a Family Feud night in partnership with A-team and Wilf’s. So that’s basically where teams of four sign up and they can come out to the event and participate and all the proceeds go to Movember. And then this Saturday there’s actually a ball hockey tournament hosted by two of our Lazaradis Student Society clubs, The Link and Sports Management Laurier, and it’s from 11 a.m. until early afternoon.”
Within LazSoc, clubs and associations are participating in a friendly competition to see who can raise the most funds before the end of the month. Each participating club has a designated Movember rep in charge of spearheading awareness and collecting donations.
“I can speak specifically within LazSoc, we have a goal, basically we created a competition with all the clubs and associations underneath Lazaridis Students Society to kind of create the most awareness and raise the most money, so each club is kind of raising money on their own,” Hall said.
“Individuals themselves actually set goals for it, so we actually don’t set any specific goals that we’re trying to raise, as we aren’t the ones collecting the funds ourselves, it’s all within the individuals that participate in our initiatives.”
Clubs, associations and individuals participating in Movember use the official Movember Canada website to create platforms for donations, known as “Mospaces.”
These pages can de shared directly and these provide a list of the up-to-date fundraised amounts for each aprticipant, as well as a leaderboard ranking each partcipant based on the amount of donations they have gsrnered.
Students are encouraged to participate in the Movember festivities as much as possible, whether that’s by coming out to take part in one of the upcoming events or simply donating to the cause.
“I think one things that’s really impressed me this year with the campaign is that there’s other organizations within Laurier, not just on the business side but within the campus side, that have been partnering and running Movember themed events for the month,” Hall said.
“I think it’s really awesome that we have all these clubs coming together and actually supporting one another. So no matter what faculty you’re in or what association you’re under, or if you’re a student that’s maybe not really involved, the chances of you seeing the marketing promotion for one of the Movember related events are quite high.”