Engage Aotearoa

Category Archives: Men

Better Blokes support groups

Better Blokes is a peer support service for men who have survived sexual abuse. They run support groups across Auckland. Visit their website for more information. While their groups don’t run during level 3, you can still use their online chat service and call their phoneline for support.

  • West Auckland Group
    Mondays 7:30 – 9:30 pm
  • Pacifica Group
    Wednesday 7:00pm – 9:00pm
  • Mt Roskill Group
    Mondays 7:30 – 9:30 pm
  • Northshore Group
    Thursdays 7:30pm – 9:30pm
  • South Auckland Group
    Mondays 4:00pm – 6:00pm
  • Epsom Group
    Wednesdays 10am – 12:00am

Visit the Better Blokes website to find out more about their services and how to contact them: https://betterblokes.org.nz/

Keep Learning with the Updated Online Resources Pack

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In support of this year’s Mental-Health Awareness week theme, ‘Keep Learning’, the team at Engage Aotearoa have added two new pages of links to the Online Resources Pack for you to explore. Find new online sources of distraction/entertainment, self-help tools, information, support and recovery stories – and keep learning for Mental-Health Awareness Week and beyond.

Click here to browse and save a copy of the updated file

New links include…

  • All Right Canterbury
  • Beyond Meds
  • Coming Off
  • Conversations that Matter
  • Depression is Not Your Destiny
  • Everybody
  • Guide to Psychology and its Practice
  • Intervoice
  • Like Minds, Like Mine
  • Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse NZ
  • Mental Health News Hub
  • Mind Share
  • Open Culture
  • Reasons to Go on Living
  • Recovery Notes
  • SPARX CBT Computer Game
  • Support for Parents of Suicidal Teens
  • Support Page for Anxiety Depression and Mental Illness
  • The Depression Center 4.0
  • The Peaceful Parent
  • Worry Wise Kids

Find more Recovery Information Packs on the Engage Aotearoa website.

 

National Depression Initiative Seeks Rural Men to Share Stories of Recovery from Depression

The National Depression Initiative (NDI) is undertaking a new project around rural mental health.

They want to make a new series of videos for depression.org.nz, and are looking for farmers who have come through a depression journey and are prepared to tell their story.

If you (or someone you know) are male, aged 24 to 65, a farmer of any kind, and would be willing to share, please contact Belinda Moss

  • b.moss@hpa.org.nz
  • 04 9170513 (office hours)

The Nutters Club episode on Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse | Maori TV | Mon 2 Dec 2013

The subject of male sexual abuse is the topic of a very frank episode of The Nutters Club on Monday December 2nd at 9:30pm on Maori Television. Mike King and David Codyre speak to Ken Clearwater and Rewi Smith about their experiences as survivors of sexual abuse.

Watch the trailer here on Vimeo

If you miss the episode when it airs on TV, you can watch all episodes online here.

Listen to The Nutters Club live on radio Newstalk ZB, every Sunday at 11pm.

Butterfly Diaries Launched: Order Online

The Butterfly Diaries Volume 1 was launched on the 13th of October at Fiesta in the Park – a free book of four true stories of recovery from the experience of being suicidal.

Engage Aotearoa set up a tent and invited people to take a book, decorate a butterfly with a coping tip and leave it on the tent to share with others. Sixty free books were handed out on the day and The Butterfly Diaries tent finished up covered in colourful butterflies and heaps of helpful tips people wanted to share.

Online orders flew in thick and fast since the release was first announced and another 2 00 books were posted out to across the country in the days following the launch. Books have been sent to Kaitaia, Kohukohu, Kerikeri, Whangarei, all across Auckland, Hamilton, Raglan, Thames, Tauranga, Timaru, Wellington, Lower Hutt, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and a range of towns the team had never heard of before. Orders even came in from as far afield as Glasgow and The Netherlands in the first few days. There are now only 20 copies of the first print run left and the team at Engage Aotearoa are in the process of ordering more.

As soon as the books flew out into the world, the first comments started flying in…

I’ve read my copy of the Butterfly Diaries and think it’s excellent – you must be really pleased with the end result, as I imagine the participants are. I’d be keen to get a box of them so we can take them with us when we present around the country.” 

Order Online

The Butterfly Diaries is free for individuals in the community. A small donation is requested to cover the cost of postage and handling ($2.50 p/bk). If you cannot donate, simply email Engage Aotearoa with your address and you’ll be sent a copy anyway. 

Organisations can order copies online by making a donation to cover the cost of printing and posting the copies ordered ($5 p/bk). This allows Engage Aotearoa to keep free copies available for individuals in the community who may not use services.

Share the poster with the people you know and help make recovery stories easy for Kiwis to find.

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The Butterfly Diaries Volume 1: Launch & Order Details

The Butterfly Diaries Volume 1 is a FREE book of inspiring stories and personal tips from four people who have recovered from the experience of being suicidal.

Launch Details:

NOTE: Event Moved to Sunday 13th of October due to rain forecast for Saturday the 12th. 

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Engage Aotearoa will be launching The Butterfly Diaries Volume 1 at Fiesta in the Park on the 13th of October for Mental Health Awareness Week. Come along to the free public concert and pop into The Butterfly Diaries Tent – a quiet corner covered in white paper butterflies where you can stop by to decorate a butterfly with a survival tip of your own, pick up a copy of the book, relax with a copy in the reading corner or listen to the authors and editors read from the book.

  • Where: Fiesta in the Park, Western Park, Ponsonby, Auckland
  • When: From midday Sunday 13 October 2012
    Reading Times:
    12:30 – 1:00 pm Michelle Bolton reads from Breathe and Breathe and Breathe by Phoebe Wright
    1:30 – 2:00 pm Owen Bullock reads from Enough Angels
    2:30 – 3:00 pm Miriam Larsen-Barr reads from Welcome to Today by Henrietta Bollinger
  • 3:30 – 4:00 pm Raewyn Alexander reads from Emerging from the Past, Transformed

The Butterfly Diaries, Volume 1
Four true stories of transformation told by four New Zealand writers.

  • Stories by Raewyn Alexander, Henrietta Bollinger, Owen Bullock and Phoebe Wright.
  • Foreword by Mike King
  • Edited by Miriam Larsen-Barr and Michelle Bolton

In Aotearoa, New Zealand, 1 in 6 people have suicidal thoughts each year. It is a normal human response to feel hopeless sometimes. It takes a great deal of distress tolerance, brute determination, skill development, support and understanding to survive the urge to act on those thoughts and feelings when they arise. But hardly anyone ever talks about suicidal thoughts and feelings, making it even harder for people to find out how to get through. The Butterfly Diaries gives voice to the stories of those who have been there and made it out alive. Sean, Jane, Mary and Brad have all been suicidal, survived their own suicide attempts and found their way to a place where they are glad to be living their lives. In The Butterfly Diaries they share how they strengthened their wings and learned to fly.

The first edition of The Butterfly Diaries Volume 1 will be placed in high-schools and GP waiting rooms across the NZ, to make recovery stories easy to find. Suicide rates peak among youth and most people who are suicidal visit a GP in the months leading up to making an attempt, even if they do not talk about how they are really feeling.

How to Order Copies

You can nominate a service or person to receive a copy of The Butterfly Diaries or order a copy for yourself by making a donation on the Engage Aotearoa website to cover the cost of posting your book. Just fill in your details and give the delivery address in the space provided. The minimum donation is set at NZ$2.50 (the cost of NZ postage and handling). A donation of $5 will get a copy posted for you and cover the costs of printing a copy for someone else.

Click here to order a copy of The Butterfly Diaries

Contact Engage Aotearoa for more information

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Want to help prevent suicide in NZ?

You can help get more copies of The Butterfly Diaries out there for people to read. Sponsor a print run by making a donation on the Engage Aotearoa website.  Every donation over $5 is tax deductible. A $20 donation pays for eight more books. A $500 donation prints enough books for a small school. 

The Victory Fashion Parade | Whangarei | 28 Sep 2013

When Engage Aotearoa visited Whangarei with Mike King and Key to Life for the Community Korero earlier this year, the team met a wonderful woman named Vicky Flavell who wanted to put her passion for fashion design behind a good cause.

The Victory Fashion Parade brings together designers from the Far North for a night of style, with all proceeds going towards Engage Aotearoa’s project to get printed copies of The Community Resources Directory and The Butterfly Diaries out into communities across the country. Making help easy to find when people are struggling is an important part of preventing suicide in NZ. Now, the people of Whangarei can help make that happen just by enjoying a good night out with their friends.

  • 6 pm, Saturday 28 September 2013
  • Toll Stadium, Whangarei
  • Tickets $40
  • Contact no. 021 144 6080

Victory Fashion Parade Whangarei 28 Sep 2013

 

 

Mike King Korero Heads to Taranaki Region in September

Mike King and Tai Tupou are hitting the road again in September to encourage schools and communities to make it cool to korero about the tough stuff, so we all make it through.

  • 10 September, 1 pm, Cool to Korero, Francis Douglas College, New Plymouth
  • 10 September, 7:30 pm, Community Korero, War Memorial Hall, Stratford
  • 11 September, 7:30 pm, Community Korero, Waves Building, New Plymouth
  • 11 September, 12:30 am, Cool to Korero for Hawera High and Patea Area School, The Hub, Hawera
  • 12 September, 11:30 am, Combined Community Cool to Korero, Opunake College, Opunake

While the team at Key to Life are getting ready to hit the road, the team at Engage Aotearoa will be adding recovery resources from each of these towns to The Community Resources Directory, so they can be delivered to those who need them when the team hits the ground in each of their locations across Taranaki. If you know of any services in the Taranaki region you think others would find useful, email them in.

Real Life Story on TV One this Sunday 14 July at 8:30 am

Chris McMurray is a poet and a rapper. Words are his thing.

At nine he lost his father to a fatal heart attack… and he went down a disruptive path of drug use, after which he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder.

Now at the age of twenty-two Chris uses his art to express what it’s like living with mental health problems and is looking to the future.

Share his story in the documentary this Sunday the 14th of July at 8:30 am on TV One.

Check out the promo clip here on Youtube.

Engage Community Resources Directory Updated 3 July 2013

The Engage Community Resources Directory has had another round of updates added, including…

  • A Psychiatrists Section that lists most of the community mental-health services in the country
  • More Crisis Teams
  • Rotorua, Tokoroa, Hamilton therapists added
  • Plus other services that have been sent in from community members. Keep them coming, guys!

The information manager at Engage Aotearoa still has stacks of services waiting to be added, so keep an eye out for next month’s update. As usual, there is so much more waiting to be shared.

Visit The Community Treasure Chest to check out your own copy of The Community Resources Directory.