In this piece I speak to Killian Walsh (HE/HIM) a former business development manager for the men’s health charity Movemeber that is the leading charity to change the face of men’s health through raising funds and awareness about Prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention. He talks about his work with the Movember foundation and why the activism is important to him.
‘’When I started working with Movember Ireland as a business development manager. I was tasked with raising funds from new business in exchange for talks on men’s health, which I would deliver. That’s how I learned about men’s health and the crisis that it is currently in but eventually I moved on in my career, but I stayed in contact with Movember Ireland and in 2019 I organized the first Movember comedy/drag festival that happened in early November. Hopefully this will grow and turn into a yearly event.
The work of the Movember foundation is important to me because the reality is that Men’s health is in crisis. We live in a culture where men are simultaneously told they are more privileged and rightly told they should be mindful of this in day to day life but also have been raised in an environment where they have been told that expression of emotions or self-expression of a difficult time is weakness.
I think this dichotomy is the leading factor on why male suicide is so high because according to the Journal in 2017 out of nearly 400 reported suicides, 80% were men, so I guess tackling suicide is why Movember is so important to me. I think the most influential thing that happened 2019 to me was the amazon going on fire really sparked (pardon the pun) a desire to launch a platform to talk about climate in a non-depressing way. I’m planning to launch a podcast where comedians and sometimes scientists talk about the climate in funny but informative way. It`s going to be called “How F#(%£`d are we?” hopefully it will serve as platform to build an environmental activist community in Ireland.
I would describe myself as an activist because I’m involved with two charities, precious plastics Dublin and Movember. My goal is to build platforms to highlight issues in society. The two goals are to build an annual comedy/drag show festival in Dublin that will (hopefully) one day become as big as fringe festival and the second is to create a podcast where comedians and experts talk about the environment without making people feel hopeless about climate change and organize beach clean-ups that turn into parties. Now I am currently working as a civil servant. My plan is to try and transfer into the Environmental protection agency (EPA). Which funny enough, in order to do that, I’m back at college part time in UCD studying environmental management’’.
If you were affected by any of the above issues discussed here please contact-
The Samaritans: 116 123
Pieta house 24 hour monitored suicide helpline: 1800247247
