By Emily Cassel, News Correspondent

If you see someone sporting a ‘stache this month, consider this:’ That handsome gentleman could be cultivating upper-lip hair for a cause.
Since 2004, Australian group Movember has been encouraging men to grow a mustache in November to raise awareness for men’s health. Guys grow a mo (Australian slang for mustache) form teams, gather donations, and attend end-of-the-month parties to show off their facial hair.
The organization got its start from a joke, Movember CEO and founder Adam Garone said. Garone said he and his friends were discussing ’80s fashion and wondered why ‘- unlike tights and Chuck Taylors ‘- the mustache never made a comeback.
The guys decided to grow mustaches for the newly-named ‘Movember,’ and reunite at the end of the month to compare facial hair. Unfortunately, Garone and his friends received endless grief about their mos from parents and girlfriends, he said.
‘I said to the guys at the end of that year, ‘Hey, that was a lot of fun, but we need to legitimize this so we can get away with it,” he said.
Garone said he believed Movember had the makings of a great charity event, and he knew he wanted to support an all-male cause. He said that while women have done great work raising awareness about breast cancer, he thinks prostate cancer is still ‘under the radar.’ Because a few his friends had fathers with the disease, he chose it as his cause, he said. The first Movember to raise awareness for prostate cancer was in 2004. It had 450 Australian participants and raised $55,000.
‘To me, that sort of validated that we could turn this into a charity event,’ Garone said.
Movember has grown each year, and this year more than 250,000 men are participating worldwide. Garone said he anticipates they’ll raise more than 40 million US dollars for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The charity has also managed to partner with brands like Gibson guitars and Pepsi Max, and pro wrestler/reality TV star Hulk Hogan has signed on as a ‘Mo Mentor.’
While it may have started as a joke, Garone said having the mustache as their ‘hairy ribbon’ brought attention to their cause.
‘When you don’t normally have a mustache ‘- and I’d say the majority of guys participating don’t ‘- they are asked ‘What’s going on with the mustache?’ he said. And that leads into exceptionally valuable conversations about prostate and testicular cancer.’
Mustache aficionados in the Boston area may have a chance to get involved with Movember next year at The Savant Project. Located at 1625 Tremont St., the restaurant has hosted an annual mustache party for the past three years, and this year’s event on Oct. 3 was the largest yet.
While the mustache parties haven’t been held for charity in the past, Savant Project owner Benny Kraines said he was considering partnering with an organization for future events.
‘This year was such a success that we’ll probably associate with a charity for next year. … I know that Canadian Club [a brand of whisky] does Movember, raising awareness for testicular cancer, so maybe something along those lines,’ Kraines said.
Movember isn’t the only organization using hair (or lack of it) to make a difference. Boston marketing agency Small Army formed Small Army for a Cause and hosted a fundraiser called Be Bold Be Bald! Sept. 17 to raise money and awareness for cancer research after the organization’s co-founder, Mike Connell, died of cancer in 2007.
‘We wanted to do something to honor him, and we wanted to use our creativity to really raise money and make a difference too, not just raise money but raise awareness and get people talking about cancer,’ co-founder Jeff Freedman said.
In order to get people talking, the agency decided participants in the fundraiser would don bald caps for the day and collect donations and garner support from friends and family members. More than 1,600 people participated from all over the country, but Freedman said he is still waiting to hear how much the event raised.
Freedman said while the event was a lot of work (he joked that they didn’t quite know what they were getting themselves into), Small Army for a Cause plans on doing Be Bold Be Bald! in the future.
‘It’ll be an annual event,’ Freedman said. ‘This year we were kind of non-partisan. … We’ll likely partner in the future with some of the larger [charities] and use this to help them raise money.’