One Journey Toward Healing
Every quarter, we set out to answer the same question: what does it actually look like when men in rural Zambia are given permission to stop pretending they’re okay?
This quarter, we found part of the answer in 21 men.
Over the past three months, HIMZ walked alongside these men through dialogue sessions and reflection circles, exploring how rigid ideas about manhood have shaped their health, their relationships, and their place in family and community life. What started as hesitant conversation grew into something deeper — men listening to men, many speaking openly for the first time about pressures they’d carried silently for decades.
One theme kept surfacing: shared responsibility. Caregiving, household chores, family decision-making — the men in our circles came to see these not as “a woman’s job,” but as a family’s job. It’s a small shift on paper, but a real one in practice: in who cooks, who checks on an ailing parent, who has a voice at the table.
This quarter also marked a milestone for HIMZ itself. Our team visited and reviewed the land earmarked for our future headquarters — a home base that will let us grow programs like the HIM Garden and expand our reach across more communities.
And we were humbled to be invited by Voice for Human Rights Zambia to have our founding director, Alick Mandandi, speak at their upcoming Men’s Mental Health Month Fundraising Event, joining mental health practitioners, community leaders, and government representatives in a shared push to strengthen Zambia’s mental health response.
We also heard from one of our own volunteers this quarter, who put it simply: “I came to hand out pamphlets. I stayed to listen.” Read their full reflection inside.
Every one of these stories points to the same thing we said back in Q1: healing begins when we stand together, not alone. Thank you for standing with us.
