CEO Dave Wells Travels to London for Movember’s ‘Scaling What Works’

Reclink Australia CEO Dave Wells was delighted to take up an invitation to attend Movember’s recent ‘Scaling What Works’ Conference in London.

The three-day conference was a workshop-based event gathering Movember’s international partners that are addressing men’s mental health and suicide prevention, with key topics delivered by various attendees from organisations across the world.

Sixteen programs from across the world were chosen for ‘scaling up’ funding by Movember, including organisations from Australia, Canada, America, England, Scotland and Ireland.

Reclink Australia submitted a proposal to ‘scale’ our Gambling Harm program into Western Sydney – a program that had already proven successful in Victoria.

“I was proud to see that the Reclink Australia model is unique on an international stage, no other countries represented have something similar,” said Dave.

“Reclink Australia sit comfortably among the most advanced organisations at using sport and recreation for health promotion.”

Other topics covered in the Conference included masculinity and its relationship to health promotion and mental health and suicide ideation. Masculinity is often seen as a negative in health promotion however, it needs to be appropriately viewed as a positive. Of particular interest here was the idea that we need to use language of ‘taking control’ of mental health rather than ‘asking for help’.

The Conference itself allowed the opportunity to develop an international knowledge-sharing community that will likely meet face-to-face on an annual basis and online quarterly.

Dave acknowledged his experience as being incredibly “enriching and enlightening” to be able to hold these discussions with partners on an international level.

Among the organisations that Reclink Australia have now formed relationships with are Sport Alliance UK – who work to provide sport participation opportunities throughout the justice system; early offending, within prisons and post release programs – and Street Games UK, who have developed some of the models that Reclink Australia uses to deliver sport and recreation programs. These relationships facilitate sharing of program ideas, evidence and research internationally; we are all working to understand how sport can be effectively deployed for health promotion and community development.

As an organisation that continues to expand, Reclink Australia would like to thank Movember for their efforts in bringing these like-minded organisations together on such a global scale, with Dave excited to return home and share much of the insights and takeaways that will ultimately be used to help Reclink reach new levels of impact on a daily basis.

To find out more about the Scaling What Works program, visit the website at Movember - About Us.

Image credit: Sport In Mind.

Article: Sam Wharton.