MenCare Changemakers Journey

The MenCare Changemakers Journey is a partnership between WOW and long-time collaborator Equimundo, a US-based organisation dedicated to engaging men and boys in conversations around gender equality and preventing violence worldwide. 

Taking place from autumn 2025, the MenCare Changemakers Journey will work to mobilise over 100 influential stakeholders from around the world from business, the media, culture, civil society, governments and more. Through a long-term engagement programme, the aim is to understand how to achieve health and wellbeing for men and boys together with women and girls, and how to solve some of the biggest problems facing men, boys and manhood today. 

The journey will culminate in a global summit on Caring Manhood to be held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2026. Focussing on driving solutions, each of the Changemakers will be assigned one of seven themed action tracks – tackling themes from Caring Manhood in the Workplace to Boys and Education – with gender based violence at the intersection of each. Each action tracks will interrogate a problem statement that the Changemakers will work together to solve. This will lead into a second MenCare Changemaker Summit to be held in Australia in 2027 with more details to be announced.

An eighth strand of activity, led by WOW, is developing the role of arts, festival and storytelling as essential tools for social change. Building on WOW’s 15 year methodology, WOW will engage the Changemakers and the wider public, in Rio and beyond, to shape a global festival methodology focused specifically on Boys and Men; one that can invite wide participation, discussion and share ideas across borders. 

At the 2026 Summit, WOW will convene a group of world leading artists in residence to spearhead this work. Changemakers and the general public will then experience first hand WOW’s work with a day-long festival programmed by WOW in the centre of Rio featuring workshops, conversation, music, art and more.

The resulting methodology will be ready in 2026 and will articulate how to work across the sectors of research, advocacy, activists, artists, business, service delivery and policy making to bring stories, new narratives and lived experience to life.