Men’s Mental Health Event

The Cause

We are a non profit organization registered under the Societies Act. We have been hosting workshops/events in our community of Westlock since 2015 - all pertaining to mental health & wellness and suicide prevention. We have been reaching out to different pockets of people to get them engaged in what we do as most of our events are attended by women. We have hosted 2 Men's Mental Health events in February that last 2 years and are looking to do that again February 2020. The first year we had Clint Malarchuk and our event was called The Crazy Game - we had Clint do his presentation and then we had a "hot stove panel" with some former NHL players. This past February we had Gizmo Williams former Edmonton Eskimo at "Tackling Mental Health". We had approximately 240 people show up - they got to wear their favourite jersey and we served pizza and had door prizes. Our expenses run around $5,000 for the guest speaker alone; so we are requesting funds to help cover this cost. We are looking at bringing in Corey Hirsch (former NHL player); we will be listening to him speak in St Albert this month and will find out details. About 80% of what we do in the community is FREE for our guests - we have one big fundraiser every September called Nelly's Project and it is with those proceeds that we fund these mental health sessions. We have been asked to start doing events like this in other communities; however it is a big job to commit to and we are all volunteers.

Who Will it Benefit?

This event will benefit the male population in our community and surrounding area. We know firsthand how difficult it is for men to talk about their mental health. We have slowly been making a difference in our community with all the sessions and workshops we have been offering. This past January we had an event for our Farmers and in April we held an event for the First Responders in our community - police, firemen, tow truck drivers, EMTs and the topic was on post traumatic stress disorder. We had 88 in attendance.