“No-Shave November” started out in Australia 2004, when a group of 30 men organized it. The whole point of No-Shave November is to not grow mustaches or beards in the full 30 days in November. The reason why the men came up with this idea is because they wanted to start raising awareness for men with depression and prostate cancer.  With this idea, the group of men made something that started out small, into something as big as it is now.

When this event first started out, only a couple of people started to acknowledge it, but now that everyone seems to be doing it, you would start to think that it’s mostly because of the Bandwagon effect. The Bandwagon Effect is a smaller group of people start doing things together, thus making everyone notice them and want to start doing it themselves. Not only is it the Bandwagon effect but it is also to raise more awareness for things such as prostate cancer and depression for men.

Here in Falls Church, we have plenty of staff members as well as students who participate to grow awareness. We asked a student Maher Yusuf (11) on his take and if he participates, “I’m only able to grow out a moustache but I still participate to grow awareness. Actually, not shaving gives me more time to have time to do homework and study, so it helps me as well as growing awareness.”

Falls Church is extremely supportive on growing cancer awareness and to support cancer prevention, research, and education. Grow whatever your face is capable of growing, it’s for charity.  Last year over 1.1 million participated in No-Shave November, or “Movember” as the foundation can sometimes be called, and every year it increases by thousands more. The money that they do earn for doing this, the money that you normally use for grooming and shaving products, goes to a lot of organizations to educate cancer prevention and save lives for those who are fighting the battle. The biggest charity that it goes to is the Movember charity—not only is it the foundation’s name but also the original charity program.