Going Beyond ‘Programs for Problems’
© Next Gen Men 2017
By Jake Stika
To redefine what it means to be a man—if you travelled back in time and asked us what our vision is at Next Gen Men, that’s what we would have said, not even all that many months ago.
And if you’ve taken note more recently, we’ve basically stopped.
Why? Well, if you’re OK with some story time, the journey we took as a team to get there is actually an important ‘TSN turning point’ in the history of Next Gen Men.
The story starts with the root of our organization: the youth program that we started building Next Gen Men on in 2014, and the 10 modules that made it up. It was designed to lead boys and young men—the youth who, back in those days, joined us after class in some 130 schools across the Greater Toronto Area—on a journey of discovery rooted in gender equity, healthy relationships, and positive masculinities.
What we didn’t know around this time last year, was that life for students and teachers (and us) was about to change dramatically, and the things we relied on to reach these youth—the venue of after-school programming, not to mention the physical meeting spaces themselves—were about to look a lot different.
Fast forward through the spring, summer and fall, and the programs we deliver and the spaces we create all look a lot different. More importantly though, how we think about them is different.
Spaces don’t have to be spaces anymore. Not literally at least: what the youth who have taken part in NGM Alliance have shown us is that two strangers can spark a friendship in a chatroom as easily—and sometimes more easily—than in a classroom. It’s never a sure thing, but we’ve seen that the intangible space you give the boys, the culture you create, matters more than the walls and roof.
On top of that unlearning, we added the revelation that got us talking so much about the Future of Masculinity. Namely: that the ‘programs for problems’ framework can be too comfortable and formulaic for the vision of culture change that we want to champion.
Our past selves and our colleagues in the gender equity space can be forgiven though for seeing the appeal. Identifying problems, designing curriculums, building benchmarks, measuring outcomes, writing reports and grant applications—it’s all long been a part of how non-profits like us found the funds to stay alive.
But that way of thinking takes our eyes off the ball: instead of supporting the (admittedly huge and ambiguous) work of creating culture change that’s sustainable, pervasive and self-perpetuating, it creates a systemic mindset of finding “person with problem” and handing them a pre-made solution.,
Or worse, designing one that doesn’t address the root of the issue.
That was the mindset that helped us arrive at ‘redefining what it means to be a man’ all those years ago. But if we unpack the language, it means taking someone’s existing definition, crossing it out, and replacing it with a new one.
The problem was clear, but the answer wasn’t. To figure it out, we went back to what the pandemic has been teaching us about creating spaces: that by taking a pause, by creating an opening and not trying to fill it right away, we give the boys and youth we work with something way more potent than a pre-made solution.
Boys already grow up with enough forces eager to tell them what to be. By telling them instead, “here’s a space, it’s yours, now go stretch your legs in it,” NGM Alliance gives participants something more than just programming, something they couldn’t get from an Xbox or a dictionary.
So that’s the story of how we stopped talking to boys about redefining their relationship with masculinity, and started asking them how they would undefine and reimagine it themselves. And where it led us is the future: the ultimate undefined space.
And that’s how we define our vision now: a future where men and boys experience less pain, and cause less harm.
Jake Stika is the Executive Director of Next Gen Men and one of its co-founders.