Today we spoke at the Caring Campus project conference in Toronto, Canada. This was utterly inspiring. Generously funded by the Movember Foundation the Caring Campus brought together three Canadian universities to improve mental health and decrease substance misuse among men on campus. Student-led projects took place at Dalhousie, University of Calgary and Queen’s University on a range of topics.

Lorraine did a keynote on gender transformative thinking for men. Together, we did two workshops on gender transformative approaches to health promotion with some very enthusiastic students, faculty, and staff. All of this was well received!

But the most amazing part for us was the wonderful, receptive audience of young men (and some young women) working in universities and colleges on improving gender equity. Campuses in Canada have had a bit of a bad rap of late with tales of crude Frosh chants, sexual assault and harassment, drunken partying and the like. But you wouldn’t be thinking about those issues at all if you had been at the Caring Campus project.

A big shout out to the student leaders and the supportive faculty! We will be hearing more from these emerging leaders, I am sure.