CoMHAT Boyup Brook boosts men and women resilience program with community event

A Boyup Brook community event created a space for men and women to discuss mental health while learning to cook — with everyone coming together for a collective community dinner at Mayanup Hall. Project manager Colin Hales said the Boyup Brook CoMHAT community event ran separate masterclasses for men and women as a resilience program. Following the cooking classes, the groups met at Mayanup Hall for the dinner and talks by Chris Gibbs, from The Regional Men’s Health Initiative, and Dani Hewton, from Next Gen Wellness. “They both spoke on mental health and how your health can affect your mental health to give people awareness of how important it is to look after your body. Mr Gibbs also spoke at the men’s cooking class during the day, while Ms Hewton gave a talk at the women’s session. During the day, a group of 15 men embarked a smoking class with Brendan Fisher from Southwest Smokehouse to learn Texas-style barbecue and ways of smoking meat. Mr Hales said the men’s program was sponsored by Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal as part of a “men’s resilience project”. “Brendan went through different styles of cooking and how he smokes — and how it helps him with any time he’s feeling a little bit down and out. “That’s his go to. “All the guys got tips off him, and we got to do a bit of smoking meat ourselves. “We culminated the meat that day for dinner that night at the Mayanup Hall.” While the men learned to smoke meat, a group of 20 women attended a masterclass making desserts with Boyup Brook locals Sony and Matthew Kavalam on their property. “We recently got Australia Post grant as well, which is for a women’s Rural Resilience Program for better mental health in the Blackwood region,” Mr Hales said. “The ladies all whipped up some sweets for desserts for Saturday night. “They (Sony & Matthew Kavalam) have an approach where they grow everything, or grow the majority of the ingredients they use for cooking, and then incorporate that into their cooking.” Mr Hales said the class showed the benefits of cooking with natural food for the body rather than processed ingredients — and how natural food affects the mind and well-being. At the end of the day, everyone came together for a community to share the food prepared in the day and talk about mental health as a group. Around 80 people attended the community dinner which was open to the public with music by Broken Horses, on Saturday March 22. Mr Hales said the community event was an opportunity for people to step outside of their comfort zone, meet new people and learn new cooking skills. “Coming out of COVID, we’re all used to staying at home and not doing anything . . . and we haven’t kick-started ourselves back to where we used to be. He said the Mayanup Hall was utilised more 30 years ago with events and dances three times a month. “Nowadays, it gets rarely used. People tend to stick home. They’ve got easy access to the internet. They’ve got easy access to TV and live streaming, “It’s pretty easy to stay at home, but you don’t get that interaction . . . you don’t get that community spirit. “By enabling a few of these events, we’ll be able to help with that community spirit,” he said. “It was such a success — we’d probably look at doing another one.”

CoMHAT Boyup Brook boosts men and women resilience program with community event

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