November has become a month that focuses on raising awareness around men's health.

It has been dubbed as 'Movember' by a charity of the same name, which raises awareness around men's health by encouraging men to grow moustaches throughout November.

The term Movember stems from the creation of the Movember foundation in 2003 in an attempt to raise awareness of men's health issues.

Friends Travis Garone and Luke Slattery challenged 30 people to grow a moustache, and the money raised from this challenge grew into something so much bigger.

Since 2003, the foundation has now funded more than 1,250 men's health projects around the world.

The charity focuses particularly on mental health problems, suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer.

More than 1.4 million men globally are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, and one in eight men in the UK will receive a diagnosis of the disease in their lifetimes.

Moreover, discussions about male suicide, according to research conducted by the Samaritans, are less frequent than discussions about female suicide because women are more likely to report having attempted suicide than men are.

This is despite suicide being the biggest killer among men aged under 45.

This Movember, Kingston's Proper Blokes Club has expressed why raising awareness about men's health is so important.

The Proper Blokes Club was started by Scott Oughton-Johnson in Southwark in 2020.

Speaking to Kingston Nub about why he began the club, Oughton-Johnson said: "I started the Southwark group due to my own issues in seeing my children and being in and out of the court system for years took its toll on me.

"I wanted to create a space for dads but on the first walk one guy turned up and he wasn't a dad, so the group changed its direction straight away to helping all men."

The Proper Blokes Club now has 15 walks a week with around 500 guys and has three drop-in centres and a dad's group. 

It started its groups within the borough in October 2024 in partnership with Kingston Council to encourage more men to get active and to get them talking about mental health. 

The Proper Blokes Club runs walks on Tuesdays outside Surbiton station at 6.30pm before walking for an hour and returning to the start point. 

Speaking about the importance of Movember, Oughton-Johnson said: "It's extremely important for men to have a space like this it's the societal pressures of being a man that causes a lot of their problems so having this space really helps."