What did your career involve before transitioning to charitable work?
My background is in corporate treasury and management consulting working for top-listed companies both in NZ and in the United Kingdom.
How did The Yarns Men come to be?
Following my lived experience with mental health and suicide, it has become my passion to do something about it. The Yarns Men is my 4th venture in the space and is the evolution of discovering what is meaningful and likely to have the most impact. The journey started in the tech space, trying to sell suicidal behavioural monitoring Internet of Things technology to governments, to now simply trying to help guys have good conversations. It is funny how the simple things have the most impact.
What sorts of services and help do you provide as an organisation?
The Yarns Men creates opportunities for working-aged men to experience life through good yarns. We do that in a few ways:
1) Regular events with guest speakers sharing their journey with vulnerability. After the speaker, participants break into peers to answer 4 questions:
a. What have you struggled with in the last week?
b. What do you want to work on in the next week?
c. What are you proud of?
d. What gives you hope?
2) The Yarns Men Podcast – be sure to check it out wherever you get your podcasts...
3) The Art of a Good Yarn Socially Prescribed Workshop. Social prescribing is a means for a clinician to prescribe a non-clinical, non-medical community initiative. Various regions already do this via Green Prescribing. For our workshops, clinician’s prescribe male patients showing signs of loneliness or social isolation.
Participants will develop better "yarn skills" through understanding their values and managing the "monkey mind" that holds them back, aiming to build a stronger sense of community and connection. The workshop is facilitated by The Yarns Men team, including trained clinicians, social workers, and peer supporters, and has been developed using principles from Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT).
What goals or plans do you have for The Yarns Men in the next year?
We have set the goal of yarning with every working-aged man in Christchurch over the next 2 years. Well directly or indirectly. We will make a good dent in that over the next year.
The Art of a Good Yarn pilot is launching at the end of April. We plan to nail down the workshop and measure the impact. From there, we hope to roll it out around the country.
In addition, we plan to collaborate with existing social infrastructure (Community Organisations, clubs & groups) to help guys have better yarns.
How do you balance working in suicide prevention and social health while maintaining your own wellbeing?
Great questions! Connection and community are big values for me. I’m privileged to be able to have great yarns on a daily basis. If I’m having great connected yarns, I feel good. However, I do have to balance that with running and not overcommitting to events.
What memories or experiences stand out when looking back at your time at UC?
All the opportunities, events and connections the UC clubs created were fantastic! Whilst I won’t name specific experiences as that might be incriminating (just kidding...), the approach to creating community and connection has stuck with me and is something we’re applying with The Yarns Men.
