In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day is cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly world­wide on No­vem­ber 19 to fo­cus on the ef­forts to­wards the wel­fare of men by mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence and rais­ing aware­ness of is­sues that men face.

It was first cel­e­brat­ed in 1999 by Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, to com­mem­o­rate his fa­ther’s birth an­niver­sary. He fur­ther en­cour­aged every­one to use the day to bring up is­sues that con­cern men and boys.

How­ev­er, In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day was in­au­gu­rat­ed in 1992 by Thomas Oast­er. It was con­ceived a year ear­li­er.

In­stead of just mak­ing this day about cel­e­brat­ing gen­der, Dr Teelucks­ingh pro­mot­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day as a day to re­flect on is­sues af­fect­ing men and boys world­wide. The day falling on No­vem­ber 19 every year al­so co­in­cides with Movem­ber, where men or Mo Bros avoid shav­ing and grow their mous­tach­es and beards to raise mon­ey for men’s health.

This day is ded­i­cat­ed to speak­ing up about men’s well­be­ing and health, their sex­u­al strug­gles and the so­ci­etal con­di­tion­ing that they are sub­ject­ed to. This is al­so the day when dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by them are spo­ken about and bet­ter gen­der re­la­tions are promised to be cre­at­ed. The ul­ti­mate aim of this day is to pro­mote ba­sic hu­man­i­tar­i­an val­ues and aware­ness on men.

In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day is based on six pil­lars which fo­cus­es on build­ing pos­i­tive male role mod­els – the work­ing-class he­roes of the day-to­day-life. It al­so fo­cus­es on cel­e­brat­ing men’s con­tri­bu­tions to so­ci­ety, com­mu­ni­ty, fam­i­ly, mar­riage, child care, and to the en­vi­ron­ment. The third pil­lar promis­es to take care of men’s health and so­cial, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al well­be­ing. It al­so high­lights on the dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by them in mul­ti­ple spheres. In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day cre­ates aware­ness on gen­der re­la­tions and fo­cus­es on pro­mot­ing gen­der equal­i­ty. It al­so promis­es to cre­ate a bet­ter and safer world where every be­ing can thrive to their full po­ten­tial.

In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day in­cludes top­ics around men­tal health, tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty, preva­lence of male sui­cide, pro­mot­ing men’s health, im­prov­ing gen­der re­la­tions, to name a few.

If you are won­der­ing how to cel­e­brate the day, here’s an idea: On this day, do­nate to caus­es re­lat­ed to men’s health, or make/share posters that talk about men’s men­tal health and phys­i­cal ail­ments, and join con­ver­sa­tions on so­cial me­dia to spread the word.