Movember 2020 came around quick and fast this year. At Irdeto, we were ready to tackle the challenge of once again raising awareness of men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s mental health. This month is so integral to ensuring that more lives are saved, and we create an open and more accepting space where we can talk more about issues that seem to be too easily brushed under the carpet.
We took the challenge again to raise money, generate awareness and bring attention to the Movember movement. Our Mo Bros got to growing and our Mo Sisters started running, walking and moving more. Whether it was the box car, the businessman or the rockstar, our Bros embraced their newly grown facial hair and provided us with weekly updates on the progress of their Mo. Colleagues joined together to walk around local parks, or swap public transport for their feet to get them from A-B.
A true fundraising campaign wouldn’t be complete without a dedicated emoji or virtual backgrounds to further spread the awareness, so our designers created a Movember emoji to be used across our internal Slack channels and a Movember branded virtual Zoom background. Spreading awareness was a key part of the campaign and by making the small and discrete changes, not only did we spark conversation, but also bring attention to such a powerful campaign.
In the third week of November, we hosted a Movember webinar. During the webinar, our Irdeto Movember team shared some information about our CSR program and Irdeto’s health and well-being initiatives, while Michael Fischer from the Movember Foundation shared details on the life-changing projects they fund, and gave some tips on how individuals can take care of their health or the health of the men in their life.
Agnė Sipaviciute described her experience of this years Movember below:
Honestly, I have never waited for November so much as I did this year! I strongly believe that it’s so important to speak about mental and physical health challenges openly. Especially for men, who usually tend to hide emotions.
Everything started up again at the end of summer when I had the first meeting with Michael from the Movember organization. After that, I continued conversations with different people at Irdeto and received big support to launch the Global Movember campaign for 2020. I was very happy to see that so many colleagues joined this movement again and in different ways – by growing their moustaches, sharing pictures with their progress, raising money, challenging each other to move more or just simply showing support with Mo Zoom backgrounds. Working together we achieved so much and proved that small things can make a big change.
Christian Mendez spoke about his experience also:
This was my 3rd campaign as captain of Irdeto’s Movember Team, it has been a fantastic experience. What I enjoy the most about it is to see how it brings out the best in people. I see kindness, collaboration, and genuine willingness to help. This year we overachieved our funding target and ended up among the Top 3 teams in the Netherlands. It was all made possible thanks to the collective effort of everybody involved: Irdeto Movember Team (growing moustaches, running, and fundraising), Irdeto CSR Team, Irdeto Exco, and all our donors and supporters. A perfect example of team effort. Thank you all! and until next year. Stay safe and healthy.
