WA’s Young Aussies of Year helping boys open up about emotions and modern masculinity

Two young West Australians who grew up in boys’ schools where silence and “toughness” reigned are now launching a statewide initiative to give boys healthier ways to talk about emotions, relationships and what it means to be a man.

On Thursday night Dr Haseeb Riaz and Gareth Shanthikumar took home the 2026 Young Australians of the Year award for WA.

In 2020, the duo founded ManUp, a non-profit educational service designed to empower young men and challenge traditional ideas of “what it means to be a man.”

The organization has since expanded with a team of dedicated volunteers who have helped deliver 45,000 sessions and reached 22,000 boys in schools and communities across WA.

But despite Thursday’s award recognizing their work, the duo say ManUp is just getting started and more is needed than ever.

A key part of ManUp’s approach is creating guided peer-to-peer conversations and providing a safe space for boys to be vulnerable with each other.

This is neither Mr. Shanthikumar nor Dr. It was something Riaz didn’t have while growing up in all-boys schools; They say this absence causes problems later in life.

“When I left high school, my prejudices about the world were misogynistic and almost non-responsible,” Dr Riaz said.

“There’s this kind of culture in a lot of boys’ schools that leads to women not being respected as much or seeing them in a slightly dehumanizing way.”

For Mr. Shanthikumar, the pressure to remain silent was inward. Years of repressed emotions turned into anger and eventually self-harm.

“I was in a pretty dark place… I didn’t know how to express it and I wasn’t comfortable talking about my feelings with anyone,” she said.

“So I repressed it, and that repression led me to engage in unhealthy behaviors that, at my lowest point, turned into self-harm.”

But from this breaking point came clarity.

“I was forced to be vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, all the pain I had hidden came out,” Mr. Shanthikumar said.

“I can either end my life, or I can do something about it and change my life.”

When he finally opened up to his friends, he discovered they were struggling too.

“When I came out and expressed my vulnerability to all my friends, they admitted to me that they were all experiencing some sort of mental health crisis at the same time.

“I couldn’t believe it… We were all going through the same thing, but none of us talked about it because it wasn’t normalized.”

After studying their own experiences, Mr Shanthikumar and Dr Riaz said they wanted to do more than just continue, they wanted to change the system for the next generation.

They set out to provide early intervention for boys and help prevent harmful masculine norms long before they take root.

“Looking back, what we wished for when we were growing up was some kind of opportunity to talk about these things in a preemptive atmosphere and to question, debate, or hold accountable our preconceived notions of society.

“We have always found that the most powerful mechanism for this to happen is peer-to-peer chat, and from there the idea just grew.”

ManUp has since worked with schools in Western Australia to run workshops for boys aged five to 12.

In each session, students are divided into groups of 8-12 people with a facilitator, creating a non-judgmental, safe environment where they can reflect on their attitudes towards society, their peers, and themselves. The program consists of three sessions focusing on men’s culture, relationships and coping.

These talks cover a wide range of topics; Both began to witness more of this, the men said, including sexual consent, mental health and elaborating on the question of “what it means to be a man.”

Recent years have seen a rise in red pill influencers and toxic masculinity content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, enticing boys into harmful online pipelines. It’s a trend that youth workers say is increasingly being implemented in WA classrooms.

“With extreme ideas going viral… we are seeing more of a Red Pill community where men isolate themselves and think they don’t need women and all women are bad,” Mr. Shanthikumar said.

“We have had many sessions where boys swear and insult girls as they pass by our workshops.

“Of course we call them out on every issue, but we also dig deep into the issue and why are they doing this?

“Once again, we underscore the need for a healthy role model for them.”

“The more education and the more boys we can talk to, the more we can just get them to unlearn these ideologies and learn to really step into their own version of healthy masculinity.”

Looking forward, the duo hope the Young Australian of the Year award will help expand ManUp’s reach and help more kids access the conversations they missed while growing up.

Mr Shanthikumar said he hoped the recognition would “bring greater awareness to the work we do at MAN UP, provide greater outreach so we can speak to more students across the country and generally help us with long-term sustainability.”

Dr Riaz said the momentum could help “leverage some funding towards preventive masculinity services and the work they do”.

“But at the core of it,” he said, “we just want to continue talking to men…we want to continue to give young men the space we never had growing up.”

Infobox information

SSI WINNERS & 2026 NATIONAL FINALISTS

2026 Australian of the Year Doctor Daniela Vecchio

2026 Senior Australian of the Year Professor Kingsley Dixon AO

2026 Young Australians of the Year Dr Haseeb Riaz and Gareth Shanthikumar

2026 Local Hero frank mitchell