MenCare Changemaker Summit

The MenCare Changemaker Summit 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 Changemaker Summit 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 first MenCare Changemaker Summmit took place in Rio de Janeiro from 27 to 30 May 2026. Focussing on driving solutions, Changemakers were 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 track is interrogating a problem statement that the Changemakers will work together to solve. A second MenCare Changemaker Summit will 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 convened a group of world leading artists in residence to spearhead this work. Changemakers and the general public experienced this work first hand at WOW's Boys & Men Festival, a day-long free event programmed by WOW and local partners in the centre of Rio featuring workshops, conversation, music, art and more.

The resulting methodology will be ready later 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.