Today I went up to my University's Youth Mentoring director to inquire over the fact that there are zero mentoring programs on campus offered to empowering and mentoring young males, never mind that we have two different ones dedicated to empowering young women, one for empowering men of color, a good 4-5 based around concepts of helping minority groups of different racial backgrounds move ahead but no programs devoted to empowering young males. I can't really think of a logical explanation as to why there seems to be no attention drawn to the issues young men face in our society from the unrealistic pressures of masculinity, violence embedded into young men from a very young age, society conditioning and dare I say training young men to be emotionless, the staggering amount of fatherless young men growing by the days, lack of positive male role models, hyper-sexualizing young men from a young age, lack of scholarship programs designed to help young men in college, lack of attention and awareness drawn to male health, homophobia in young men, the overwhelming number of young men failing the education system…need I say more? After pleading my case the program director thought I had a point, so he decided to give me a shot at writing a proposal for the committee to review. If I could come up with some important issues/key points that I think should be addressed to empower and mentor young men, they will grant me the funds to design a mentoring/enrichment program sponsored by the University to empower middle school and high school male students Now I could use some ideas, input and thoughts on what you guys think are problems, issues, or themes that I should write in my proposal to mentor, empower and educate younger males?
I believe in a mentorship program that comes across all milestones of being in University. In saying that it should cater to students from their freshmen years (helping them assimilate into campus life), throughout their sophomore and junior years in which it helps them remain competitive with the rest of their contemporaries and addressing issues which cause students to lag behind or be held back, to their senior years in helping them bridge across the mainstream (pertaining to access to jobs that actually make us of their course rather than settling for a skills or labor mismatch). Some issues I can think of include the following: *Institutions, namely the University should commit itself to retaining these young men up until college completion. Here we need to look into the rates and causes of college drop outs. If lack of proper funding for their education is the problem; perhaps the University needs to look into more funding to help promising yet underprivileged young male students. Perhaps as a mentorship program you can help these young men tap into these otherwise unknown resource of funding. *Young men in particular have a higher representation as compared to their female counterparts in being held back because of violations of school policies or laws, hence subsequent suspensions or other forms of disciplinary actions. As a trend Universities have been inclined to punish these students with disciplinary action but concurrently failing to offer institutional support. Counseling is one thing. But young men are in need of Mentorship Program as a means of providing a form of Leadership. These students may in fact been acting out because of the sudden Leadership Void. Prior to University these students had at all times have had an Authority Figure present--- Parents or some other Guardian. The problem lies wherein young men enter University and are suddenly expected to go at their academic life knowing what to do without having anyone lead as an example. *This issue on higher rates of college dropouts particularly amongst young men needs to be addressed. Because with lack of proper education these young men result in lack of preparation for the workforce which leads to a twofold effect. One, this leads into an untapped resource for social and economic development. And two, this creates a butterfly effect wherein a vast majority of inmates are poorly educated individuals. *In reference as to what you said is the lack of a mentorship program for young men. This creates a notion that young men are “University or Academic Models” which belies the fact if you look into the statistics of college completion. Young men lag behind their female counterparts. And because of this commonly held notion, this issue not only has the danger of not being fully addressed but worse it creates the image that as seemingly empowered individuals (that is above other minorities), young men should not actively seek mentorship. Hope to have helped
Very insightful! I'm definitely going to address the high % of high school/college dropout rates by young men. I never really looked at it as a problem dealing with guidance and leadership but I could see the correlation between the two now that you mention it. I have to find some stats online and numbers to make my statements more legitimate.
I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you succeed. but given previous cases of people trying to create "men's" societies in college, I would not hold your breath. Why are our universities blocking men's societies? - Telegraph I mean this one was for a suicide prevention group, and it got shot down because Fem Soc (seriously have none of them read 1984?) did not like it.