7,200 minutes in a 5 day working week.
7,200 men gone by Friday.
One man takes his own life every minute.
I'm looking for 7,200 people who refuse to let it keep happening.
With a contribution of just $10...
(roughly £7, €9, $13AU, $13CA, $16NZ)
The Full Story:
The Short Version:
At 49, I almost didn't walk in.
I'd arrived at a men's circle and I saw them: big guys, gym bros, some covered in tattoos, the kind I may have crossed the road to avoid at night.
I was older than everyone.
I felt like I didn't belong.
I nearly gave in to that inner voice, turned around and went home.
I'm so glad I didn't.
Because if I'd left, I never would have walked
back in.
And it helped change my life.
Here's what I want you to understand. I wasn't a man with no one.
I had that brotherhood.
I had a smaller circle of ten men who met every other week, solid, unchanging, a place we could go to real depth.
I had a wife who supported me through all of it.
And still, at 50, after twelve weeks of sleep deprivation and financial worry, I had the darkest thought of my life.
F or the first time in my life.
That was the moment I decided to turn something negative into something that might make a difference.
I started looking into it.
And what I found stopped me cold: 555,000 men a year take their own lives.
That's 1,521 a day. Roughly one every minute.
If it could get that dark for me, with everything I had around me, what about the men who have none of it?
This is why every minute matters
Over a working week, those numbers add up to around 7,200 men.
Monday hits hardest, the weekend ends, the weight comes back, and too many men think, "I can't do another week of this."
Suicide rates are highest on Mondays.
Since I started this project, I've lost count of the people who have reached out, all touched by a suicide:
- The kids left with no dad.
- The women left with no partner.
- The friends, family and colleagues left with all the unanswered questions.
And again and again, the same sentence: "I just didn't know how bad it was. He didn't tell me. He didn't tell anyone"
Because men don't do this out loud. They internalise.
We were all told the same lie: that a real man copes on his own.
Stiff upper lip. Be strong. Don't show emotion. Men don't cry. Man up. Really?
Here's something I've noticed
Nearly everyone who has watched this series and then written to me to say thank you, or helped me fund it, has been a woman.
And that makes complete sense to me. Because women talk to each other.
They share. They tell each other the truth.
When something is wrong, they have people they can say it to out loud.
Most men have never had that. We were raised to cope alone, to say we're fine, to carry it in silence until it breaks us.
And that silence is exactly what's killing us.
So if you're a woman, you already understand something the man in your life may never have been given.
A place to be honest. People who get it. The relief of finally saying it out loud.
That is what we are building for him. The thing you already have, and he never learned he was allowed to want.
We built something to break the lie that 'men have to go it alone'
Brotherhood Blueprint is a finished nine-part documentary series.
44 people, 37 men and 7 women, sat down and told the truth about masculinity, fatherhood, shame, love, addiction, sex, porn, trauma and the things men never say out loud.
But the documentary series is only the doorway.
The real work happens in the men's groups, the circles, the brotherhood, the spaces where a man hears the five words that change everything: I know how you feel.
"You realise you're not alone. Those five words, I know how you feel, there's something on a soul level that makes you feel heard."
Harry Lionheart, contributor
Every week we still celebrate the new man who walks in anxiously, because we know exactly what courage it took him to get through the door.
What your donation does
The series is finished. It took ten months, a huge amount of my time, and the belief of people who backed the mission to make it real. That part is done.
This campaign is about one thing: getting Brotherhood Blueprint in front of the men who need it most, and the people who love them.
And here is how it works. I have done this before.
With a previous documentary, I put money into ads for two weeks, and built an audience of thirty thousand people.
Then I switched the ads off. And it kept growing on its own, to seventy-four thousand, because people watched it, it moved them, and they shared it with the people they loved.
That is the snowball. And that is exactly what your donation starts.
Your money puts these conversations in front of people who would never have seen them.
Some watch. Some are moved enough to send it to someone they care about.
A man sees it because his sister sent it.
A father watches because his daughter said, "Dad, please, just watch this one thing."
That is how this reaches far more people than the money alone ever could.
Every dollar goes into ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, a specialist to run those campaigns properly, training the facilitators who will hold these rooms all over the world, and building our own studio so we can make new content every month instead of renting one by the day.
You are not just funding a moment.
You are funding a machine that keeps going long after this campaign ends.
The whole series is free. So why give?
Anyone can watch all nine episodes, free. That will never change.
But any donation, even $10, unlocks everything else we have built:
The 44 full-length interviews behind the series. The audio versions of everything. The full transcripts. A 60-day challenge with daily actions that turn what you have watched into something you can do. And lifetime access to our community.
It is worth far more than I am asking. As soon as this campaign ends, this package becomes $97. Give $10 today, and it is all yours for life.
You are not really giving for what you get, though. You are giving so that one more person finds this.
Be one of the 7,200
Our goal is 7,200 people, one for every man we lose in a working week.
Hit that, and we can run this properly for a year: reaching men who would otherwise never find it, and building the circles that catch them.
Every $10 helps us reach one more man. Give $10 and you reach one. Give $100 and you reach ten or more.
Give whatever feels right to you, because you are not just donating.
You are hopefully helping us get this to a man in time, someone whose life does not have to end the way it does for thousands every week.
7,200 people giving $10 gets us there.
Or 720 giving $100.
Or 72 who give $1,000.
The bigger the give, the more people you help us reach.
Then do one more thing. Share it.
I cannot reach the world on my own. But together, we can.
A share might not reach the man who needs it directly, but it could reach someone who helps us get to him.
To make it easy, here is a message to copy and paste, and send on WhatsApp, email, or your socials:
More than one man takes his own life every minute. My friend Theo made a documentary series and runs men's circles to change that, and he's watched it save lives. All nine episodes are free for anyone to watch. I've supported him. Maybe you'd like to as well?
Just copy, paste, and send. That's all it takes.
Add your name to the 7,200.
I say at the beginning of the trailer, "If I can stop one man taking his own life with a project like this, it will all be worth it."
With your help, we can make it a lot more than that.
Theo van Dort
Founder,
Brotherhood Blueprint
https://brotherhoodbluprint.com
https://fundrazr.com/brotherhoodblueprint
WATCH EPISODE ONE OF NINE HERE:
