Around twenty Menslink members attended the Menslink Annual General Meeting at the Southern Cross Club in November 2016 to review the 2015-16 Annual Report, audited financial statements and elect both returning and new Board members.
The 2015-16 year saw steady growth in the numbers of young men and their families seeking direct support. The year saw a total increase of just over 12% in the number of young men seeking free counselling or mentoring.
We were also pleased to welcome back our launch partner for our Silence is Deadly campaign, the Canberra Raiders, although unfortunately timing issues at the beginning of the year saw overall numbers of young men fall by just over 15%. These issues have since been resolved and the 2016-17 financial year will see a record number of young men receive the critical message of getting help for mental health or life problems.
Importantly this year, we invested significantly in systems, people and infrastructure to:
- Grow our capability to be able to help more young men than ever;
- Improve our service quality, responsiveness and accessibility for young men;
- Keep our waiting lists as short as possible – especially for young men in crisis;
- Develop new programs to help young men develop the life skills necessary to foster healthy relationships and lead an independent life as mature responsible adults; and
- Measure the impact we are having on young men, their families, schools and community, in order to further improve our support options for young men.
We wish to thank our dedicated staff, volunteers, our corporate sponsors and donors who all made these investments possible, while continuing to support young men across our community in record numbers.
Financially, Menslink recorded a small surplus on slightly increased revenues, continuing our five year trend of positive financial results.
In measuring performance over the last five years, Menslink has seen an increase of more than 150% in the number of young men we directly support, an increase of thousands of percent in the number of young men we influence and reach through our schools’ campaigns, and a decrease of more than 10% in the unit cost of that support.
We hope that, with the ongoing support of the ACT Government and our corporate sponsors and donors, we will be able to continue these trends of providing more free support to young men, while reducing how much it costs to support each young man.
We were also pleased to have Menslink Chair Michael Battenally, Secretary Louis Carter and Committee Member Cathy Skippington return for another two year term, while also welcoming corporate lawyer and Canberra Raiders’ Board member Bronwyn Fagan to the Menslink Board.
Sadly, we farewelled company secretary Kathleen O’Sullivan, who retired from the Board after two years due to other commitments.
All of our most recent annual reports can be viewed online here