Greek Australian businessman Nick Halkitis is one of Australia’s top money raisers for ‘Movember’ – a fundraiser that raises much needed money for research and treatment for Beyond Blue and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.
Last year, Mr Halkitis raised $18,500 making him the ninth highest money raiser in Australia and the fifth highest individual fundraiser out of 145,000 Australians taking part in the national event.
This year the Northern Territory local hopes to raise over $20,000 in raising the profile of men’s health issues in Australia. Mr Halkitis first did Movember in 2010, and raised $7,500 for the cause and has been doing the event every year since, raising the profile for men’s health in the NT but also amongst family, friends, work colleagues and the Greek community.
On 1 November every year since, Mr Halkitis starts to grow a moustache for the whole month and posts week-by-week images of his progress on the Movember website. His ventures in Movember started to “raise the profile of men’s health”. “Unfortunately, a lot of attention is on women and men don’t talk about health issues with each other or visit doctors,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“The issue of men’s health – and not just cancer but mental health and depression – are very important and people need to realise it.”
Mr Halkitis does Movember as an individual every year and says the support from people in the Northern Territory has been fantastic. “I met a gentleman once at the Dundee fishing lodge – just out of Darwin – and we struck up a conversation and I told him what I was doing and that I don’t normally have a moustache and he said a friend of his had a hard time with cancer and he said he would donate $1000.
This was on the Sunday and on the Monday I emailed him and within half an hour he had donated $1500, so it does touch a lot of people and if you can get the conversation going that’s what it’s all about.” To donate visit www.movember.com.au and search for Nick Halkitis
