Martin Johnson

For the last 2 months I have been looking into ways to raise money and how to get more information on how to best help myself and others. I have had limited/no success with the funding thus far but I have been getting a lot of information.

I have been to other groups who have mental health in their missions and statements and is the driving force as to why they catch up and how someone can help themselves as well as their fellow person. One session/catchup helped me to learn that the language I use will need to change in order to make sure that there will be nothing that could trigger someone nor offend them without the intention.

Another thing that I have learned is that there are a lot more people struggling than I thought. When it came to a session, which focused on men's mental health, more than one person had mentioned that the stigma of being a father and an ex husband is that you are seen as the person who has done wrong in a lot of peoples eyes, including the kids. I have not had children of my own, and haven't had someone close to me who has been through it, so it was not something that I was aware of.

I was also heard that there was a comment made at one of the events that it is harder to share with a group when it has a person of the opposite sex in the group as there has been judgement in the past from that member of the opposite sex as they were seen and told as weak or was dismissed entirely as if to tell the person that their feelings did not matter.

I have been trying to post on various social medias, with limited success, to promote this event as well as others that I am doing later in the year. I have created events in the past so that others can join in and talk about their mental health journey which has been successful. The only thing that I have not done yet is ask people at work if they are interested in helping or joining in on the events or if they can donate. This will be my next point of call.

That is all for now but I will be looking at setting time aside for looking at avenues that could be great for fundraising but not something I have done before and know I can not do it on my own. I will leave this post with a piece of advice that I got from the Men's shed website:

'Men don't talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder.'

I did not get the amount I was hoping to raise but I was stretching myself over that month with things happening outside of the events/fundraising stopped my focus on it.

I wanted to continue raising funds for good causes as I hope that it can help someone so that they can avoid doing something drastic that they can not take back which will effect their families.