8 Focuses of NGM’s 8th Year
By Jake Stika
If you read 7 Impacts of NGM in 7 Years, I hope you came out with the sense that these people get shit done. Pardon my French, but that’s what we strive for.
The conversations have evolved since we dreamt up a youth program in 2014. Originally, we aimed to complement Ontario’s 2015 updated sexual health education curriculum while it faced backlash. We then wanted to create spaces for community conversations around gender and masculinities for people of all genders to counter the rising manosphere. Then we rode the wave of #MeToo into engaging male-dominant workplaces to consider gender (many for the first time).
Just to make sure things weren’t too easy, we survived a global pandemic by pivoting all of our work into formats that kept the crucial culture-changing conversations of positive masculinities, healthy relationships, mental wellbeing, and gender equity going through these ‘unprecedented times.’
And you know what, we’re going to keep doing it. No matter what.
This work is too pressing and too important to wait around for permission from funders and others to get on board or the moment to be ‘just right.’ We have to work with what we’ve got and keep pushing forward.
So with that, I’m sharing eight focuses of NGM’s eighth year (in no particular order):
1. Host the Future of Masculinity 2.0 Summit for Youth
Last spring we hosted the first Future of Masculinity Summit on Discord with the support of NAMEN (North American Men Engage Network). We had the like of Ashanti Branch of the Ever Forward Club, Josué Argüelles from A Call to Men, and Chris Hook from Promundo join us for discussions with boys and masc-identifying youth from across Canada and the US to talk about what it means to ‘be a man’ across race, sexuality, and cultures such as gaming.
“One takeaway that I have from the summit is there are people in this world that will actually understand me. There are always people who will listen to me. Sometimes when we have things we don’t want to tell our families, there will always be others there for us. For that, I am really glad.”
We want to reach more youth in more places this year to keep the conversations going. The silver lining of virtual summits is that we’re not limited by geography.
To make this happen we need at least 100 Next Gen Menbers by December 31st, 2021.
2. Write a Report on the Status of Boys
Heck, we’ve got all these boys together. Why not ask them ‘what’s up’?!
Often adults throw their hands up when it comes to what’s going on in their boys’ inner worlds. This can be especially scary in the wake of COVID-19. We’re still reeling from the isolation and stress of the pandemic that has no doubt changed the current generation of boys and young men.
How is their mental health? Do they have an online or in-person support network? What are they encountering online? What are they stressed about? How can we help them?
There are a lot of unanswered questions — let’s find some answers.
To make this happen we need at least 120 Next Gen Menbers by February 1st, 2022.
3. Host the First-ever NGM Community Summit on Masculinities
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that fall 2022 is a time where we can bring people together (in-person) again. We miss y’all!
Pre-pandemic our NGM Circles were active in five cities across Canada and we miss being among people who crave conversations across genders for, with, and about men and what that means today. Bringing together thought leaders, we may ask and answer questions like:
How can we be effective advocates—addressing our own fragility, defensiveness, and bias—and supporting others to do the same?
How do we father the next generation when the narratives we inherited don’t serve us?
How do we get senior male leaders on board with gender equity when they’ve already been through the wringer?
How can we be the partners we strive to be?
What would a world without patriarchy look like? How do we get there?
Don’t worry, we’ll make sure there’s a simulcast so you can tune in from wherever you are!
To make this happen we need at least 150 Next Gen Menbers by June 1st, 2022.
4. Create a ‘Being a Next Gen Man’ Course
Have you ever been to an NGM Circle event? Were you blown away by the awareness-raising and new perspectives shared? Did you think that that was a great 101, but how do we go deeper—what’s the 201?
We’ve been missing that too. So we’re building it.
In the spring of 2022, we’re anticipating piloting our first cohort of men and masc-identifying nonbinary folks tackling the big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) of wanting to be a better person and not necessarily knowing where to begin. Over several weeks, Next Gen Men facilitators will open up conversations around:
Naming our own values and beliefs, recognizing how they impact us and our actions.
Understanding patriarchy, its impacts on us and others throughout our lives, and how we’ve both upheld and resisted it.
Exploring the nature of power, structural inequities, privilege, and bias—how to recognize these forces at work in ourselves and our environments, and drive change!
Digging into intersectionality—what is it, how does it exist within our lives and the lives of the people around us?
How do we have tough conversations with others about inequality, about privilege, about gender? What are some of the skills and techniques for effectively communicating?
How do we move past shame and fear to be confident change-makers?
What’s our role? How do we know when to stand in front, stand beside, or stand behind others to ensure we are neither complacent nor falling prey to a ‘saviour complex’?
Participants will learn with and from one another, have a chance to practice skills, challenge themselves, and connect with others on a similar journey.
(Veronika is legitimately over the moon about this — it’s going to be so rad!)
5. Change Locker Room Talk Across Canada
We’re in the home stretch of integration, but our Raising Next Gen Men course has been approved by the Coaching Association of Canada as an external professional development credit! What does that mean? Well, it means that when 1.6 million coaches across Canada are fulfilling the requirements of attaining or maintaining their certification.
Many male sports coaches are often boys’ first role models of masculinity outside of their immediate family since most early-childhood educators are women. For those who don’t know, I’m a 6’8 former semi-pro basketball player. I’m very passionate about sport as an entry point into new visions of what it means to ‘be a man.’
We can’t wait to take this opportunity to build on work we’ve already done with the Toronto Blue Jays, Rugby Ontario, Sport Manitoba, Whistler Blackcomb, Rowing Canada, and the Canadian Ski Instructor’s Alliance in our 8th year.
6. Release New Seasons of MASKulinity, Oreja Peluda, and Breaking the Boy Code
We have a podcast network! Did you know? Well you definitely should and as the most recent season of Modern Masculinity wraps, we’ve got new seasons of our other programs cooking:
Breaking the Boy Code
Breaking the Boy Code is seeking to centre the voices of BIPOC boys in a series of conversations on race, relationships, mental health, systems of power and change in season three. Two members of the Next Gen Men youth team, Jonathon and Adrian, are working with a small group of youth partners from the Regent Park neighbourhood of Toronto to create this season.
MASKulinity
The upcoming season of MASKulinity looks at how the performance of masculinity has informed our personal experiences emotionally and in relationships. While shining a light on the ugly ways that white supremacist ideas pervade our existence and relationships in unconsciously gendered ways. Including a pitstop in hip hop's memory lane, examining masculinity, misogyny, and patriarchy in a beloved genre while imagining what a turning point could look like.
Oreja Peluda
The second season of Oreja Peluda (hairy ear) looks at the personal experiences of eight men from different countries across Latin America and how their stories relate to the ways masculinity has been constructed around subjects such as sexual health, homosexuality, violence, and more. Combining these personal experiences with discussions with experts on those different subjects, the season will create a challenging and reflecting space for listeners and their own experiences. Tune in, en español.
7. Take Care of Our People
NGM’s single largest expense line is our people. You won’t ever hear about ‘overhead’ from me, because our ‘overhead’ are the people changing hearts and minds of youth, in the community, and at workplaces. This work just doesn’t happen without relationships. Ask anyone who encounters an NGM youth program about Jonathon’s magic, or Veronika’s heart in the community, or Trevor’s sass in the office.
We’ve made deliberate choices by being a distributed team allowing us to not only cover more ground but also save on physical space and the constraints of it. But Next Gen Men cannot fulfill our vision and mission in a scarcity mindset. We need to be an organization that not only attracts the best people to do this work (check ✔) and be able to keep them, invest in them, and help them fulfill their life’s ambitions through this important work.
8. Rise to the Occasion
We don’t know what this means yet, but we’ll meet it. It may be working with a professional sports league roiled in issue after issue. It may be inheriting storytelling about engaging men and boys from someone retiring. It may be bringing people together across Canada to build capacity around this work.
One thing we know is that there are many ways to promote positive masculinities, healthy relationships, mental wellbeing, and gender equity and we’re going to keep finding and/or creating interesting, innovative, and impactful ways to fulfill our mission of helping boys and men be and do better.