Inside the Cave

In today’s episode my conversation is with Ben O’Toole Senior Facilitator and SpeakEasy Coordinator at The Man Cave and Jeremy Macvean aka JMac Project Manager at Movember.  Late last year we formed a partnership arrangement with Movember to design and deliver SpeakEasy workshops in corporate and community settings.  These workshops are designed to tackle Men’s mental health by providing tools to have more powerful conversations.  In this conversation we chat about what drives us to do this work and give an insight into what SpeakEasy is all about.

In this episode I have a chat with Marshall Grosse, a member of our Board of Boys at the Man Cave.  This inspiring young man is a podcaster and content creator whose top values are respect and kindness his purpose or why is to truly serve his community in any way he can all this and he is 17 years old and in his final year of school. This was a humbling and inspiring conversation. To find out more about Marshall you can find his podcast at https://open.spotify.com/show/0JtrohTxeAVtwsorvg5GJI?si=ba0ca51e01c64a22 or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ladschatspodcast/?hl=en

In this episode I speak with Imogen Thomas the Head of Growth at the Man Cave.  In this conversation we talk about the importance of understanding the why and the how when considering how to grow an organisation with a social purpose. 

On today’s episode I have a conversation with Joshie and Nic two of The Man Cave facilitators that have been out delivering workshops in Term 1 of 2022.  Joshie and Nic give us a small window into what they have observed is going on for teenage boys at the moment as they reflect on what the boys are describing and expressing in our workshops with them. This unique viewpoint is critical to understanding how we can best work with teenage boys, particularly after the past 2 years of challenge and change.

Today’s episode is a recording of the inaugural meeting of a working party that formed earlier this year with the intention of assisting The Man Cave to go through a Rainbow Tick Accreditation process.  The Rainbow Tick is a quality framework that helps health and human services organisations show that they are safe, inclusive and affirming services and employers for the LGBTIQ community.  The members of this working party are Opal, Linds, Richard, Claudia and Al. I hope you enjoy this open and honest conversation.

In today’s episode I chat with Senior Facilitator Narada Guzman. Narada has been steering the recruitment process for the latest round of facilitators in both Victoria and New South Wales in this conversation he describes not only his own journey into the Man Cave but also the rigorous and competitive selection process and gives us an insight into what we look for when we search for positive role models.

My conversation today is with Creator of Context, Josh Payne  and Head of Digital Experience, Media & Innovation, Niro Yamunarajan about The Man Cave’s decision to double down on the digital platforms as a way of meeting the boys where they are at.  We discuss how we are meeting boys in a digital environment through our Board of Boys and also using the gaming platform Twitch.

This episode is part 2 of a conversation that Al Green I had about being agile in a pandemic.  In this episode we invited Hunter Johnson into the conversation to share his experience as CEO but we also discuss a pivotal values based decision that he made early in the pandemic that became an artefact of our organisational culture.

Lucy Barrat has worked in education for over 12 years, passionately supporting young people in becoming exceptional communicators, critical problem solvers and resilient individuals with a developing understanding of who they are and who they wish to be. In this episode we explore Lucy's wealth of experience in the education and wellbeing space and how she is using that to assist The Man Cave to develop some important resources for teachers.

For a lot of businesses and organisations the pandemic has been a time of uncertainty and change.  In this episode, Al Green our Head of Community and I reflect back over the past 18 months to 2 years on some of the decisions the Man Cave has had to make as an organisation in order to navigate this unprecedented time in history.