“We ended the month by shaving off our moustaches in the fraternity building”, says member Floris Deelen. He organised the fundraiser this year. “At the beginning of October, we started to think about what we wanted to do and what would be fun. This resulted in us heading off to the fraternity building with wax strips and charging people ten euros each to wax our ‘belly moustaches’.” It did not stop there, though: the RSG organised great activities throughout the month. “For example, people could order a metre of beer in the shape of a moustache, but with one beer less than goes in a normal metre. All the money this raised went into the pot for Movember.”
In addition to donating, the families of the fraternity members helped in other ways, too. For example, Floris’ dad came up with a great idea. “He owns café Gers in Spijkenisse, where you can spin the wheel”, Floris says. “It usually costs ten euros, but he put the price up to eleven euros in November. Every extra euro raised went to our campaign and my dad matched the total raised as well.” The barber’s shop owned by the dad of fraternity member Elvis also did its bit. “He let us put up QR code posters in his shop, the ultimate place to raise money for Movember.”
Mental health
Among other causes, Movember raises money for research into prostate and testicular cancer. That said, Movember’s focus on men’s mental health is important to the fraternity as well. “I think it’s still quite a taboo subject for men, but it’s been gaining more and more recognition in recent years and it’s getting easier for men to talk about it.” Floris believes that Movember has had a big role to play in this development. “Events like this show just how important this subject is.”
The fraternity members are conscious of the need to look after their own mental health, too. “We always keep an eye out for each other and check in on anyone we might not have seen for a while, to make sure they’re OK.” The fraternity hopes that this will help students to reach out for help when they have study problems, thereby avoiding mental well-being issues. “We act quickly because no-one should have to cope on their own. And we don’t want people to bottle up everything until it’s too late to do anything about it.” This makes it really important to check actively how someone is doing at times like this, Floris says. “Obviously, having others ask how you are lowers the threshold to getting help yourself.”
Ten thousand euros for the tenth edition
The fraternity first started raising money for Movember nine years ago because of the personal connection a former member had with this good cause. “He knew someone with testicular cancer and came up with the idea at the time.” The fraternity has been raising money successfully ever since – more than five thousand euros last year.
The fraternity has set the bar even higher for next year. “We want to raise ten thousand euros to mark Movember’s tenth edition.” To achieve this, the members are planning to organise a sponsored run around the block of the fraternity building. “We weren’t able to organise it this year, but ten kilometres seems like a good distance to us.” There is just one problem: the lap around the block of buildings near the Oude Haven is rather short. “About 380 metres, I’d say so people will have to run a lot of laps.”
