The tash is back

Movember isn’t a typo but the name of a fundraising campaign carried out in several European countries and Australia, Canada and the US every November. The aim is to raise money and awareness for men’s health, cancer in particular.

The name comes from joining the words “mo”, slang for moustache, and November. Any post-pubescent male can participate. The rules are simple: start November 1st clean shaven and grow a “mo” for the rest of the month. The idea is that the moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health and that their 30 day commitment is a sort of charity challenge.

The Movember movement, explains the campaign’s website, was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The plan was simple: to bring the moustache back as a bit of a joke and do something for men’s health. No money was raised that year but, inspired by the women around them and all they had done for breast cancer, the self proclaimed “Mo Bros” decided to create a global men’s health movement.

In 2004, 432 Mo Bros joined the movement and raised $55,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, representing the single largest donation they had ever received.

The Movember moustache has grown year on year since then, expanding to the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, The Netherlands and Finland.

In 2009 the global participation of Mo Bros climbed to 255,755, with over one million donors raising £26 Million (GBP equivalent) for Movember’s global beneficiary partners. The funds raised through Movember’s UK campaign benefit the The Prostate Cancer Charity (TPCC), the UK’s leading prostate cancer charity.

The money raised as a result of Movember is channelled into a number of world class and innovative education, support, research and awareness initiatives.