The Helping Boys Become Healthy Men mentoring project has concluded for the summer and involved boys in School District 51.
Created through a community action initiatives grant from the province, it focused on mentoring projects for young boys, from ages seven to 12, in Grand Forks, Greenwood and Rock Creek.
Mark Perry, one of the co-ordinators working with the Boundary Family and Individual Services Society (BFISS), explained that the project involved initiatives with engaging activities that have a positive effect on boys.
“The local project supported boys in three ways: one) using adult-child relationships to strengthen attachment and resilience; two) using a wrap-around case management model that uses broader communications; three) remove barriers to activities to increase social inclusion, healthy activity and provide male role-models,” he said. “Some of these barriers may have been financial, social or logistical. Especially with the West Boundary, transportation is a big issue.”
Participants of the program came from Beaverdell, Bridesville and Midway.
“The idea was to create a proactive approach to the issues that young men face,” Perry said. “It has been noted that men struggling with mental health or substance abuse problems make up a substantial portion of the clients served by the sponsors or organizations in this proposal. Many of these men failed as boys to receive the mentorship or role models they needed to become healthy adults.”
Perry noted that the program engaged the boys by providing male mentors who engaged them in activities that were inclusive, challenging, of interest to them and built skills.
Activities included playing sports like dodgeball or basketball, or building forts.
“We let the boys direct the group so there were a lot of brainstorming sessions with them,” he said. “It did make it a bit challenging because they didn’t always agree on the same things that they wanted to do. Sometimes we had to satisfy them with two activities at the same time.”
In Grand Forks, there were two boys mentoring groups located at Perley and Hutton Elementary schools, where they met every other week. In Greenwood and Rock Creek, the groups met weekly.
“It was based off logistics and we felt that Grand Forks has a lot more services than the West Boundary does,” Perry said.
There were 18 boys participating in Perley Elementary, 15 at Hutton Elementary, 18 at Greenwood and 21 boys in Rock Creek.
“We did have to limit the numbers because there was only two co-ordinators,” Perry added. “Our numbers at Rock Creek kept getting bigger and bigger. There’s a lot of interest with friends recruiting friends.”
The program had a total of 517 individual attendances over a 16-week period, for a total of 1, 034 hours of male-to-male interaction providing pro-social activities and learning opportunities around social skill development, communication and conflict resolution.
“That was probably one of the big things, social skills, is being development between the boys,” Perry explained. “We did see significant growth in some of the boys early on. In the beginning we would have a conflict rise quickly, but by the end of the project when there were conflicts, we would have minimal intervention or no intervention at all. They were able to resolve that conflict.”
Perry stated that fathers were also encouraged to participate when they could.
For more information on the program, visit helpingboysbecominghealthymen.com.
