Council for Boys and Young Men
I completed The Council for Boys and Young Men. The program is a strengths-based group approach to promote boys' and young men's safe and healthy development. The council is designed as a pathway toward healthy masculine identity development, recognizing boys' strengths and capacities; challenging stereotypes; questioning unsafe attitudes about masculinity; and encouraging solidarity through personal and collective responsibility.
The participants were a highly diversified, male-dominated group (Hispanic, African American, Native American, East Coasters) which greatly added to the richness of the honest conversations we had about what is masculinity and how boys are strongly influenced by cultural messages. I gained great insight on how boys feel, process and respond, as well as useful strength-based techniques to counsel them. Contrary to cultural pressures to neutralize the genders, boys need to be understood, which isn’t meant to diminish those that don’t identify as traditional males or females.
The participants were a highly diversified, male-dominated group (Hispanic, African American, Native American, East Coasters) which greatly added to the richness of the honest conversations we had about what is masculinity and how boys are strongly influenced by cultural messages. I gained great insight on how boys feel, process and respond, as well as useful strength-based techniques to counsel them. Contrary to cultural pressures to neutralize the genders, boys need to be understood, which isn’t meant to diminish those that don’t identify as traditional males or females.