Movember 2025

Every Movember I end up describing it as being bigger and better than the last one. But Movember17 at GGS has been the ‘biggerest and betterest’ that we have ever seen. It has been gigantic. Enormous. Stupendous even. GGS teachers, students and families have embraced the Movember spirit more than ever before, put their collective hands in their pockets deeper than anyone thought possible and raised more ‘dough for the mo’ than we ever have before. Thank-you.

In 2025 Movember at GGS has moved to a whole new level. There were 14 amazing teacher moustaches competing for the ‘Moustache of the Year’ award. Mr Rees’ Movember Movement group now numbers 20 members and between them they covered 3377km over thirty days of physical activities. Ms Widdison was the winner of the staff Movement challenge, travelling over 1000km in a mixture of cycling, running and walking (the equivalent of travelling from Gravesend to Prague!). Mr Sidhu smashed through his target of walking 600km in a month and ended up surpassing 740km. But the most pleasing aspect of the month was the increased participation of GGS students in the Mo-Movement Challenge. Students from Year 7 to Year 13 embraced the challenge of setting a movement goal for the month (running, walking, cycling or swimming), raising sponsorships/ donations from friends and family and then working hard to achieve their goal, make their donation and raise awareness of this important cause. Every donation, no matter the amount, makes a huge difference to the projects, activities and research that the Movember charity funds throughout each year. Our final fundraising total for 2025 is £9674, nearly triple the previous all-time record! We finished as the sixth highest fundraising school in the entire country.

A special mention must be made about the efforts of Mr Sidhu this year; raising £2893 on his own during his personal Movember Movement challenge and also the incredible fundraising efforts of some of our amazing students, including: who have all received Movember Badges to recognise their fundraising efforts this year. The ‘Moustache of the Year’ competition turned into a real battle between some of the more experienced moustached growers in the Staffroom and some new younger members of the teaching team. Voting was neck and neck, or more accurately, lip and lip. Mr Browne (a two-time previous winner) finished 5th, newcomer Mr Ozturk took 4th place, 2022 champion Mr Robinson was third and last year’s winner Mr Burton ended up in second place as he attempted to defend his crown. There can however be only one, brand new, winner for 2025: Mr Betts.

The ‘Student Movember’ trophy is awarded for a combination of raising awareness and/or fundraising efforts and this year we have awarded the trophy for the first time to a female student: Skye Plunkett in 13EKF. Skye set herself a MoMovement challenge for the month, created a GoFundMe page to raise donations and then worked very hard to raise over £800 for the TeamGGS fund.

Sadly, Movember 2025 is now over; lips are smoother, legs not so tired and razors back from semi-retirement. Movember17 has been a record breaking Movember, the biggest so far at GGS. How will Movember18 take us even higher? Can we break the £10000 mark? Can we increase levels of student participation even further? How can we celebrate the forthcoming twentieth anniversary of Movember at GGS (in 2028)? How can I get my moustache to not look like some kind of horrible dehydrated caterpillar? So many questions………... Thank you. JCM

Other student successes from Riley Davies Y13 Daniel Hofford Y13 Skye Plunkett Y13 Justin Chenu Y11 Elliot Ive Y11 Lucas Roberts Y11 Hadeen Khan Y10 Adrian D’Silva Y9 Manii Biodun-Ogun Y8 Ben Wright Y7