Favellas

Here in Rio the contrast is stark. It is clearly one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the beaches and mountains are breathtaking. All aound the city are "favellas" which climb the hillsides. They are home to the poor and they tower over the city no matter where you go as a constant reminder of the poverty here.

Rio Begins

The first ever world symposium on Men and boys started this evening in Rio de Janeiro. Lots of dignitaries; with representation from UNAIDS, UNIFEM, White Ribbon, ProMUNdo, WHO, MenEngage and the UN Secretary general Moon.

It struck me as we were listening to these people and from looking around at all the representatives of NGO's that we were missing so many of those men and women who started working with men 30 years ago - particularly in North America. So many burned out or were "starved out" by the lack of funding or just gave up when it seemed like no one cared about their work and the men we worked with. I wonder what the founders of RAVEN, DAP, EMERGE, and people like Anne Ganley, Dale Trimble, David Currie, Jan Robson and Richard Stordeur would think about this gathering? I am here and I see that Steve Botkin and Rob Okun are here...

There is a wonderful photo display here of fathers with children of all ages. A similar photo gallery of the pioneers in male violence work would have been a nice touch.

Our struggle

The Men's resource centre started 5 years ago as a joint effort with a group of students from the University of Saskatchewan. Our objective of creating a place where men could receive help and direction to community resources was broadly supported in our consultations with the community. The centre was founded on a vision of being male positive and pro-feminist.

The ensuing five years have seen us struggle with the vision and objectives set out at the start. Board members have left us with some of them stating that "men are just not a priority for me right now". Potential new board members and volunteers have sometimes been "turned off" by our vision as pro-feminist and gay affirmative. We have undergone an organized telephone and email harassment campaign by men's and fathers' "rights" activists in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

One aspect of our founding vision that has also been a challenge has been our refusal to seek out public funds for campaigns and services. This principled position (based on not competing against women and children's programs for limited public monies) was established early on and reinforced through our public consultation process. It is a worthwhile position that has however left us few options for expanding the work we do with men and boys.

In spite of some of these challenges we have been able to continue to deliver an up to date website that includes parenting resources and access to health and mental health information for men. Seeing a gap in services we started to offer our Anger management groups. We organized and reinvigorated the White Ribbon campaign in Saskatoon. We created the Fathers project to celebrate the nurturing side of men and have offered some public education sessions to men in our community on issues like Andropause and Male Violence.

The MRC is now at a crossroads, the last Board of Directors has been dissolved and a small working group is looking at options to reinvigorate the MRC and recruit an active and engaged Board of Directors. We know that our goals are still supported in the community and we know that our original guiding principles are the ones that we want to continue working with. But we want to be an even more effective and relevant place of support and resource for men and boys in Saskatoon.

Stay tuned for more as we work through these changes. Oh yeah, one week to the Rio conference...

2 weeks to Rio

It is almost two weeks from the start of the Rio conference on Men and Gender Equity.

The upcoming conference allows/compels me to reflect on some of the ways that we have approached working with men here in Canada. In some form or other I have devoted the bulk of my 29 years of professional and volunteer life experiences to men. I have had the honour and privilege of working with men in community and forensic settings from Halifax to Vancouver.

My primary focus has been, and will always be, with men who use violence and abuse in their relationships. But I have learned a great deal from First Nations programs and individuals about working from a position of compassion and respect and my work with men living with HIV/AIDS has reminded me of men's strength, dignity and capacity for sharing.

I have known men who have died with grace and dignity, men who have sacrificed everything for their children and partners, men who have taken their own lives in pain and desperation and men who have taken the lives of their wives/partners and other men.

Over these 29 years of experience working with men my perspective on this work and my relationship to the thousands of men that I have met has changed over time. These changes and my thoughts can be found in the article I wrote for Briarpatch magazine in 2007 - the link for that is: http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2007/03/01/yesterdays-men-lost-opportunities-in-ending-violence-against-women/

This year we see a number of conferences organized to discuss "innovations and trends in working with men who batter". There is one scheduled for Toronto this spring that will bring together program people from across Canada and there is one being hosted by the Domestic Abuse Project in Minneapolis (where I was trained). As I read through the program and the speakers list I am struck by how similar these conferences look in theme, tone and tenor to those conferences being held in the late '80's and early '90's.

Yes, the use of Narrative therapy influenced approaches with men is somewhat new and yes the drum beats louder and louder for men's "treatment programs" to be closely connected/integrated with the criminal justice system but little else has changed. We still see almost no recognition for the fact that the rates of violence against women in North America have not significantly declined over time and very little discussion about how to engage "with men" rather than "at them". Instead of conferencing to seriously reexamine the approaches we have used and to launch wholesale education and engagement campaigns with adult men and boys we continue to come together to rearrange the deck chairs.

RIO holds the potential for broadening our learning. Our compatriots in Latin America and elsewhere in the world passed us by a long time ago in reaching out to men who use violence, to men as fathers and to boys and men about sexual health issues.

I am going to Rio with an open mind and look forward to the learning.

Welcome

Welcome to my/our blog. This can be accessed through our main website www.saskatoonmenscenter.com and I will soon be sending out a mass-email message to all of our friends and supporters from the last 5 years with the direct link included.

The idea behind the blog is to provide for an exchange of information, ideas and opinions that is current and relevant. Our main website will still contain information and resources that can assist men and boys in everything from health and mental health challenges to parenting issues, male violence, current events in Saskatoon and issues that may be of interest to men and those who care about them.

As the year unfolds and some of the changes planned for the MRC take place we will be able to present and discuss them here. Our Anger Management programs, the White Ribbon Campaign and other work we do will be open to discussion and comment through our blog.

March 30th - April 3rd the United Nations,the World Health Organization, MenEngage and other International bodies will be hosting the World Symposium on Gender Equity for Men and Boys in Rio De Janeiro. I am privileged in that I have been invited to attend this conference and it is this conference that has triggered the idea for a blog. I hope to be able to provide regular "live updates" from the conference as the proceedings unfold. I will also offer some thoughts about working with men pre and post conference.

In my next blog-post I would like to begin with some thoughts about the way(s) we have come to work with men in Canada and North America compared with the innovative approaches to everything from Domestic Violence to Parenting being used elsewhere in the world.

Bruce Wood