Govs to Men: We Need You

Newsom and Moore call men into service

A few weeks back, Robert Putnam and I published an essay in the New York Times, urging a civic response to the challenges facing boys and men, akin to the Progressive Era. As we wrote:

More than a century ago, reformers recognized that the most effective solution to the boy problem was to build civic institutions and spaces where men could help boys to navigate their way successfully to a mature, pro-social manhood. That is a lesson that needs to be relearned for our own times.

As former President Barack Obama said recently, “As a society, we have to create more structures for boys and men to have guidance, rituals, frameworks, encouragement.” He went further, suggesting that the men in our communities are vital assets who can act as a “sort of elders to boys, so they’re not just looking at one particular role model, but many.”

It takes a village to raise a child. But some of the villagers must be men.

We pointed out that many organizations are struggling to reach and support boys and young men, in part because of a lack of male volunteers.

So it’s been simply terrific this week to see two Governors - Wes Moore in Maryland and Gavin Newsom in California - calling men to service in their communities. Their message to men is clear: we need you.

California’s Call

In California, Gov. Newsom and Josh Fryday, GO-Serve Director and head of California Volunteers, launched the California Men’s Service Challenge, with the ambitious goal of bringing an additional 10,000 men into service roles. Fryday explained:

We need 10,000 men to step up and lead in their communities. We’re also calling on organizations to join us as partners. This initiative is about investing in the next generation of men as leaders, teachers and mentors.

Announcing the initiative, Gov. Newsom admitted that policymakers had been slow to respond to the challenges facing boys and men, in part because of false “zero-sum” thinking that this meant backing off from efforts to help women and girls. But with his recent sweeping Executive Order, Newsom seems determined to make up for lost time (and for full disclosure, I’m proud that AIBM and our partners are working with his administration).

Maryland’s Mentors

The day after California’s call, the Gov. of Maryland Wes Moore announced $20 million in new investments in a community college success program, ASAP, as well as in a drive to bring more men into mentorship roles through Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS). These investments come via a matching-funds collaboration Arnold Ventures (and again, AIBM is partnering both with Gov. Moore’s administration and is an existing partner of Arnold Ventures). Here’s the mentorship side of the announcement:

$5.6 million to Big Brothers Big Sisters, in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services and the Governor’s Office for Children. In Maryland, there are hundreds of youth waiting to be matched with mentors in Big Brothers Big Sisters — the overwhelming majority being boys. The investment will help alleviate a backlog in mentors, allowing Big Brothers Big Sisters to reach an additional 1,000 young people across nine counties with community-based mentoring. Mentorship programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters are proven to successfully address challenges facing young men and boys, including supporting mental health and substance use, keeping young men safe from violence, and strengthening pathways to careers and postsecondary education.

As the announcement states, the evidence for the effectiveness of BBBS is very strong, not least for young men. But there are not enough men to serve the boys seeking a mentor, in Maryland as elsewhere across the country, as Bob and I pointed out in our Times essay, drawing on data provided to us by BBBC national office:

There are almost twice as many women as men signing up to be a mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters. As a result, there are almost twice as many teenage boys as girls on the waiting list for a mentor — and they will wait much longer, in some cases for up to a year.

This is just one result of the strong push from Gov. Moore to uplift boys and men in his state, announced back in January in his State of the State address. Other areas of focus for the Governor and his team are mental health, education and criminal justice: so watch this space…

We need men

It is exciting to see the leadership on this front, and the clear message to men: we need you. As Bob and I wrote:

A century ago, men stepped up to build spaces for boys and were cheered on for doing so. The need today is just as urgent. We have boys seeking guidance. We have men seeking purpose. We have civic institutions desperate for male volunteers. We need to match the outpouring of civic energy, institutional innovation and readiness to experiment with risky new ideas that marked the “boy problem” reformers a century ago. In short, today’s boy crisis demands a new call to men — and for men to answer that call.

The calls are now being made, and I know that our men will respond to that call. To help boys to grow into good men is one of the greatest privileges of our lives, honestly. So a recent poem from Sherman Alexie, “Coach Pitch” could not be more timely (h/t james crabtree):

A flourishing society is one that acknowledges that we need both women and men. We rise together.