The widespread and pervasive problem of sexualized violence in our society calls for all of us to become more aware of the issues and take active steps to prevent future sexualized violence from occurring. To this end, we must look to the very important developmental years when children, especially boys/male youth start forming key beliefs and behaviour around intimate partner relationships and their masculinity.

Led by University of Victoria PhD student Carol Bilson, this project develops social programming, training of facilitators, and the initiation of a series of boys (10-18 yrs.) circles that will be psycho-educational in nature and provide age and gender appropriate content focusing on: relationships with community, intimate partners, and self; specifically, on power and control, consent, rejection, accountability, and empathy. The learning outcomes are meant to build critical and social capacity around positive masculinity, emotional literacy in boys and healthy relating in intimate partner relationships.

Evaluation interviews with parents/guardians of program participants were collected, and are being interpreted and used to strengthen future work in gender-based violence prevention programming for male boys and youth.

Partners: Victoria Women’s Transition House, Island Heath’s Man Made Program

Methods:
Qualitative

Funder: Government of British Columbia

Current Status: Data analysis and reporting ongoing.