Ask for help and embrace the response.

WR for Mental Health Awareness Week 2021

Today we bring you the last of the five principles for healthier masculinity and better male mental health from our book Manifesto. It is perhaps the most important of all, and it’s all about help: believing there is no shame in needing help, recognising when you might need some, reaching out to find the help you need, and then being open to receiving it.

We know it’s not always easy! For ten years, we had been the Warwick Rowers. It became more and more of a challenge to keep up as interest in our project kept on growing. By 2019, we finally understood that our little boathouse could no longer contain us. There was more to be done than we could manage, and more to be said than one small sports club could hope to know, let alone say.

We thought about how much all of us had learned over the years – about ourselves, about the world around us, and about the difference that any of us can make if we try. Everyone can help to make things better.

We thought about the many other sportsmen who could benefit from going on this extraordinary journey that we had been taking over many years – one that we believe has made us healthier as men.

We recognised that our message could grow stronger with the help of men who had been on different journeys to our own. We knew that our voice would have more power as one among many voices – the voices of men from different sports, cultures, sexualities and birth genders. The voice of BIPOC men, of LGBTQI men, of men who had grown up in worlds far away from our own.

We sent up a flare to ask for help, because we know how much this project has meant to so many people already, and how much it could mean to so many more. We also knew that we could no longer do this project justice by ourselves.

That help has already begun to arrive, from national and international sporting bodies, broadcast sports media, community sports organisations and from the many individual sportsmen who are joining us, naked.

Now we ask for your help, too – as a participant, a sponsor, a donor, a subscriber or an advocate on social media. Whatever you feel you can contribute to the Roar, this is an opportunity for all of us to help each other.

The Worldwide Roar is here for you.