Boys Are Worth Knowing
Photo by Ron Lach
Are the kids alright?
You can almost predict the answer to the everyday ‘how are you doing’ question. It’s usually met with a variation of a nonchalant ‘fine’ ‘good’ or ‘alright’—but there is always more to it than that.
The pandemic has irrevocably changed us all, especially for youth who experienced such turmoil during a critical time in their development.
Now, more than ever young people around the world have become isolated by the constant influx of uncertainty and change.
This disconnect has only deepened the valley between how we think youth are doing and how youth are actually doing.
How is their mental health? Do they have a supportive network of friends? Are they hopeful for the future? What is their greatest stress—and what can we do to help them?
To truly know what’s going we need to start with hard-earned trust and a commitment to listen and learn.
This means spending quality time with youth by actively listening, empowering their self-exploration, and creating supportive spaces that allow them to be vulnerable.
We believe boys are worth knowing.
That’s why we set three goals—that we need your help with—in 2022. We promised if we reached:
100 Next Gen Menbers, we would host the second Future of Masculinity youth summit to engage and inspire the next generation;
120 Next Gen Menbers, we would research and write on the current status of boys in an accessible and insightful report;
150 Next Gen Menbers, we would host our very first in-person and online community summit to connect with the passionate change-making community we’ve built.
We’re proud to say we have reached over a hundred Next Gen Menbers milestone, which means the Future of Masculinity Summit 2.0 is HAPPENING in the spring of 2022.
That’s 103 people who are invested in supporting boys and men. Who know time spent with boys is time well spent.
Who want to reach a future in which boys feel less pain and cause less harm.
We get to see the impact of your support firsthand.
When youth know that you care about them, their dreams, and their future, it inspires positive change within and around them.
Before the holidays, one of our longtime members, a 12-year-old who is deaf, approached the NGM Boys Club facilitators wondering if they would meet with him to discuss how to make the Discord server more accessible for youth who are deaf and hard of hearing. He identified three main obstacles that decreased his sense of inclusion and belonging: not knowing which events he can participate in, not knowing what is happening when we're playing games together as a group, and not seeing anyone like himself in the group.
Together, our youth facilitators made plans for a better space for him and others like him.
They debriefed his past experiences, tested bots that could transcribe speech to text from the voice channel and brainstormed ideas for more diverse and accessible events. Each NGM Boys Club event description is now accompanied with an emoji tag from 🔇❌ to 🔇⭐️⭐️⭐️ to indicate its level of accessibility, and voice channel discussions are accompanied by text chat participation and engagement as well. There is still much more to do, but the team has made a good start—our most recent event, a Minecraft storyline planning session, was a hybrid voice- and text-based discussion that included and engaged with the ideas of a new member who is deaf.
The goal for NGM Boys Club—as written by a 13-year-old member back in 2020—is to be the safest and most positive community on Discord for guys and nonbinary youth to hang out, connect, get support and discuss important topics.
This is how we do it—and we need your support.
What’s the next step?
As a parent, educator or someone committed to the wellbeing of the boys and men in your life, you have a lot of unanswered questions about how boys and youth are doing.
Help us get some answers.
Become a Next Gen Menber by March 31st to help us research and write a report that takes a deep look at the current status of boys.
A Next Gen Menbership is a $5-25 monthly contribution that goes directly to our youth programs with the added bonus of exclusive discounts, free attendance to events, and more!
And it’s the foundation of the world we’re working towards.