menatworkorganisation

On TV. Needed more time…

I was offered a slot on GB News, which I took. It’s hard to get a message with any depth or complexity across in a very short time – especially when you have no idea how short it will be. I’d rather not have left this segment where it ends, as you will understand if you watch it, but that was out of my hands. In any case, hopefully, the case is made for constructive preventative work with boys and young men.

Street lights and and the rest of the mitigating strategies are of course useful in the immediate here and now where #maleviolence against women and girls is rampant – but they are no answer to the root cause of this violence. We urgently need concerted, constructive, evidence-based, frank and challenging work with boys and young men, addressing values and beliefs around the value of women/girls relative to men/boys and all the harms that flow therefrom – to prevent the development of adult perpetrators.

Prosecution once identified and arrested? Yes.

Out of social circulation once convicted? Yes.

Preventative work to strategically reduce / end incidences of perpetration in the first place? YES!!

menatworkorganisation

A Plea for a Reality Check. Fingers Crossed…

I was invited to speak at an All Party Parliamentary Group the other day. I was one of several other speakers, experts in Sex Ed, Safeguarding and how heavily lobbied institutions can get it badly, wrong.

I spoke about:

1. The scandalously minuscule amount of strategic, programmatic work with boys & young men aimed at unpicking societal conditioning around #sexism & #misogyny

AND

2. How the misogynistic, irrational quackery of #queertheory jeopardizes that vanishingly-rare work by destroying the language needed to make any sense of our material, lived experiences as males and females within patriarchy.

I had 6 mins, so did what I could.

Michael Conroy of Men At Work C.I.C. speaking APPG, Sept 2021
menatworkorganisation

#10Dialogues for Boys and Young Men (and Those Working With Them)

Men at Work C.I.C. has produced 10 CORE Dialogues for Boys and Young Men (and Those Working With Them) a FREE manual for educators, youth workers and other professionals and volunteers working with boys and young men. It is the fruit of 6 years of focused and intentional work with teenage boys and young men in education and other youth settings. Each of the dialogues have been used many times and you are guided, step by step, in facilitating them.

It is a sequential, self-consolidating programme, thematically split, aimed at facilitating constructive and meaningful dialogues around the social messages to which boys and young men are exposed in multiple ways. Its exploration of themes of respect, personhood, safety and empathy, directly engages with the root values of sexism and misogyny and has a relentlessly practical focus on ways in which boys and young men can support both their own healthy development and be a positive and respectful presence in the lives of women and girls.

The #10Dialogues are available FREE to those working with boys and young men – download here.

The follow on materials – ‘MORE Dialogues’ come as part of a training package (in person or online) for those wishing to take efforts to engage boys and young men in these vital ongoing dialogues further and deeper.

Contact menatworkorganisation@gmail.com if you would like to discuss training for yourself or your colleagues.

Thanks and best wishes

Michael Conroy

Men At Work C.I.C.

Download #10Dialogues here – FREE

“Men At Work’s #10Dialogues programme provides boys and young men with a space where they can exercise their individual agency to reflect, learn and make crucial decisions about what it means to ‘be a man’. All boys and young men deserve to have a choice about the values and beliefs they want to carry with them through life. I am excited for boys and young men who take part in this Men at Work Programme.”

– Sarah Wigley, Domestic Abuse Consultant and Trainer

“A timely, engaging and practical toolkit for engaging boys and young men in positive conversations about the world around them. In over 20 years of experience of working with men and their violence, the consistent response I have heard is ‘why haven’t I been encouraged the talk about this before?’. Well here is that opportunity – with a range of accessible materials, training and support to enable boys and young men to engage in this dialogue and to make a positive contribution to those around them.”

– Alan Garner, Facilitator of Perpetrator Intervention Programmes

menatworkorganisation

Romeos and Red Flags

A sample worksheet for a discussion group with boys and young men in which a recent media article originating in https://thetab.com/uk/nottingham/2020/08/18/uons-romeo-sent-over-100-handwritten-letters-to-find-his-juliet-49043 but then picked up by national media outlet @DailyMirror (whose now-deleted article was screen-shotted to create this worksheet) is looked at critically in terms of language, values and behaviours.

Click here for PDF download – text clearer than in jpeg featured image /above