The statistics on male mental health, family and domestic violence, and help-seeking are well known. What receives far less attention is what happens before those statistics are made; in classrooms, in small groups, in the conversations young men are rarely given the space to have. 

Gareth Shanthikumar and Dr Haseeb Riaz founded Man Up WA in 2019 because they knew what it cost to grow up without those conversations, and the symptoms brought onto communities without them. Both navigated their own challenges with identity, mental health and the unspoken rules of masculinity, and both came to the same conclusion: the most powerful intervention is the earliest one. 

In this keynote, the 2026 WA Young Australians of the Year share the story behind Man Up WA's peer-to-peer, small group workshops model, now delivering primary prevention education to over 26K students across Western Australia, from Perth to the Great Southern all the way to the Pilbara. They'll explore why peer connection creates conditions that traditional education can't replicate, what it takes to build and sustain a program in the communities that need it most, and why investing in the foundations of primary prevention is the boldest thing the social sector can do.