Guidelines & Resources – International Men's Day New Zealand

I’m glad you want to be involved. Below are some resources you can use. Please read the guidelines for involvement.

Guidelines for Participants

Introduction

International Men’s Day (IMD) is a grassroots celebration and awareness day that
everyone is encouraged to take part in. Hopefully, there will be a great variety of
people with a wide range of perspectives doing a lot of different things. A consistent
focus across events is important because we will reinforce each other’s efforts and
produce a better result for our common goals.

Positive focus

IMD strongly encourages a positive focus for events. We want people to be
encouraged, with a bit more hope, and some extra energy to face the day. We believe
a positive approach grounded in an honest view of the world can do that.

Solution focus

IMD provides an opportunity to look at some of the problems facing men. Some of
them are weighty issues. If you decide to highlight one of the issues men face, we
would encourage you to highlight it in a way that points to a solution or at least an
improvement.
We would also encourage you to give people a way to make a difference through
some small action they can take.
For example, mental health is an issue for men in New Zealand. A solution-focused
message would be something like:

We can support men’s mental health by being more aware of the men around us. A kind word or a bit of encouragement gives everyone a bit of a lift and starts to create an environment that prevents and protects people from declining mental health.

Rather than:

Men’s mental health is a real problem that someone needs to address.

Apolitical

IMD is for men and women of all political persuasions. To make sure as many
people can feel as welcome as possible please keep your politics out of it as much as
possible.

Maintaining harmony

We would like to maintain a good reputation and foster good relationships with the
wider community, so please take care in your IMD celebrations. Be supportive of
other people putting on events.
Also, supporting IMD is a good thing to do and does not have to be justified beyond
being a good thing and that you want to do it. Please don’t make claims about who
is in a worse situation or who deserves more support.
For example, to argue for more support for male suicide prevention you can say “We
need do to more to stop 400 men a year taking their own lives”, rather than “We
need to do more to reduce the male suicide rate because it is three times higher
than women’s”.

Absolutely none of these things

IMDNZ trusts participants and does not expect serious issues to arise. However,
just like nobody puts on a seatbelt expecting to be in an accident, we would like to
clearly state the things we do not want at IMD events as a precaution.
International Men’s Day New Zealand explicitly does not support the following
things at men’s day events or to promote men’s day.