00:00 Fantasy and founder Michael Ganley we're here at City Hall what's today about?
00:04 Today marks International Men's Health Day and we're proud to bring a number of shirts from around the world
00:15 there's around 120 different countries here representing the international.
00:20 Obviously men's mental health there's a lot of concern about suicide rate among men
00:25 we tend not to share our feelings. Does sport help? Immensely. Football fans come together no matter what club, nationality
00:35 we've seen that recently, Sir Bobby Charlton's passing. But in terms of what it's about men's mental health is on the rise
00:44 it's immeasurable at the present time but football is a dynamic that can bring people together and eliminate a lot of these issues.
00:54 Do you find that men find it easier to talk and open up when they're talking about their football team than perhaps their personal feelings?
01:00 Yeah I think there's that sort of dynamic where you can have a little bit of banter with somebody else from another club
01:06 and you can then relate, you know you can bring in medical conditions and people tend to open up very much so.
01:14 Howard Fawcett is from Unison. How important is health as part of the Union's activities?
01:23 Health and wellbeing is very important to the training and activities. We have a main theme of supporting members with employment issues
01:33 but we also have a learning arm as well so we have learning reps and I'm a learning rep for Unison.
01:39 We also have a project called the Learning Stars Project which is a partnership between Unison, GMB, Unite and the council to promote all things learning.
01:47 So this event today encapsulates that theme. We look at different themes, different campaigns throughout the year
01:55 and this one today is around International Men's Day and trying to minimise or eliminate male suicide which obviously is the main cure of men under 50.
02:07 So we have lots of partners obviously Michael Granley from the FAN Museum, we've got Suman Mindwash, Mind, Ashcres, Nexus and NHS here today
02:15 all providing different strands of support that members of the community can come and engage with
02:22 and hopefully take that information home and use it for their own lives themselves or for their family members as well.
