BY CHIEDZA MAZHANGARA MANY a time society has regarded men as super humans who should always be strong and soldier on even when faced with the hardest of situations.
For Midlands Royalty Awards co-founder Farai Chigumbu there is something amiss with this societal “norm”. Chigumbu believes men’s feelings are being neglected by society and so he came up with a campaign for the boy child dubbed Speak Up Man.
Speaking to NewsDay Life & Style, Chigumbu said the Speak up Man campaign sought to motivate, inspire, celebrate as well as promote the existence of the male child in society.
“I have decided to come up with this campaign after discovering that as men, society gives us all sorts of different names and have a different mind-set, like for instance people think as men we do not have emotions. Our society believes that men should not cry but I am saying no, men do cry too thus coming up with this campaign,” he said.
The campaign will offer a platform for men to tell their own side of the story and speak out on everything which affects them to avoid hurting in silence, Chigumbu asserted.
“I believe this campaign is going to be of great help to the boy child because one of my primary reasons is to eradicate the problems of drug abuse. I have noted that many young men out there end up resorting to substance abuse as a way of solving their problems,” Chigumbu said.
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The Speak up Man campaign is going to run from June on online platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and it is intended to reach as many people as possible.
Besides discussing mental health, the campaign also seeks to celebrate and promote the talent that exists among young men.
Chigumbu’s crusade comes hard on the heels of other similar campaigns that include Cleopatra Mashingaidze’s What man wants and Batsirai Mhuka’s Brothers With Voices, which all target safeguarding men’s mental health.
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