The Mo is gone but let’s reflect on the month we have had.
For starters we had team members signing up continuously and I was impressed with the amount and the following we have built over the last few years. Then the donations started rolling in, before Movember even started we were at almost $2000! At this stage we have had urgent nationwide Aerospace General Manager, Craig Wilkinson, sign up to grow a Mo, along with other leaders in our organisation. This sparked more member to sign up and we ended up with a total of 31 members, an awesome record and benchmark has now been set.
I started with Movember in 2007 and grew my Mo to look like the current Movember symbol. I won the Man of Movember award for a new and was nominated team Captain, I think the idea was to pass it on and get rid of the title each year. I started my Captaincy in 2008 and lead the team to an improved result from the previous year, except I managed to get a couple of members in from our Brisbane office involved. At this stage our numbers were around 10. I thought it would be great to have a QLD team, so the next year I pushed and over the next couple for years I had decided I would try to create a national team where everyone from Raytheon Australia joined the one team if they were going to participate. This year we achieved that successfully and going forward it is only going to grow stronger as we also have WA joining in the team.
My choice of standouts for this year were Shane Fairweather, Dave Hutchison, Rowan Green, Phil Hall and Wade Mogridge-Khan. Shane shaved his Mo off for the first time since he was 20, this meant his wife and kids would see him for the first time ever without a Mo. Shane went on this month to grow donations to him over the $1000 Mark and he joined the Movember Platinum Club. Dave and Phil joined Movember for the first time and lead the way raising donations. Rowan and Wade also made excellent progress with fundraising totals lots higher than most of our team individuals in previous years. I hope to meet some of our other members too and congratulate them in person.
We also have had our Raytheon US counterparts join us in Movember the last couple of years and helped our network total grow to a massive $12000 raised this year! It is great to chat with some of the guys over there, especially Shaun Beaudette, the Captain, who has helped raise the Movember movement in the US and personally raised over $1400. I also hope to meet Shaun one day and personally congratulate him on what he’s achieved.
Well that is it, a great month of Movember done for another year, more money raised to help find cancer cures and ways to help depression sufferers, more awareness raised for men’s health and hopefully more men seeing their doctor annually. I also handed over the Captaincy to Wade for next year so I more looking forward to supporting the Captain and doing my bit without some of the overhead, although I won’t be Abe to help myself, I’m sure I will be there alongside him as a past Captain.
FInally, to those that supported my Mo and donated, a huge thank you. To those that have not yet donated, there is time. You can click here and donate.
Cheers,
Matt