I’ll start with the cause I take part in on a yearly basis; No Shave November. No Shave November started in 2009 when the patriarch of the Hill family succumbed to colon cancer, the children decided to start No Shave November. It was a movement to raise awareness as well as funds for cancer research and treatment, so other families wouldn’t have to incur such a loss.

The premise is simple, men spend money every week on razors or shaving cream in order to keep themselves well-groomed. For the month of November, they would simply donate that money to the foundations for cancer research and treatment. Usually, I wind up looking like a caveman by the end of the month. The cause is very well-known globally, therefore it becomes socially acceptable to look a little shaggy this month.

On the other hand, Movember is a cause formed in 2003 during an innocent conversation at the pub between Travis Garone and Luke Slattery. The cause started because they wanted to bring the mustache back in style and in order to do so they formed Movember, a cause targeted at prostate cancer and later developed to envelope the general cause of men’s health. The name came about by combining Mustache and November. The official tagline of the foundation is ‘Changing the face of men’s health.’

The rules of Movember are simple. You must start the month with a clean shaved face and grow out your mustache, but just the mustache. Then the Mo Bro’s must use the mustache to initiate conversations where they discuss men’s health and start fundraisers for men’s health. My little cousin is taking part in Movember. Although his mustache isn’t nearly as nice as mine, I’m very proud of him for raising nearly $2,000 alongside his Mo Bro’s.

Both causes share a similar underlying cause which is men’s health, both in terms of physical and mental health. I feel these causes directly align with my personal virtues, as I care a lot about mental health and always try to ensure the people around me to have good mental health. Which was also my rationale for writing this piece, to bring awareness to these causes and maybe recruit more Mo Bro’s or No-Shavers for November 2023.

Naturally, there are more guidelines to each of the causes, i.e. other options for Mo Bro’s who can’t grow a mustache for whatever reason. I hope that this column intrigued you enough to partake next year or at the very least do some further research.