Boys to Men Mentoring Workshop was founded in 1996 by Joe Sigurdson and Craig McClain. The community-based mentoring approach provides boys a variety of positive male role models who encourage the boys, many without a father, to become the man they want to be.
Now celebrating 25 years, Boys to Men is holding its 25th Anniversary Celebration: Rooted in Resiliency on April 25 at the Catamaran Resort Hotel featuring a private concert with Grammy Award-winning artist Jason Mraz, joined by Gregory Page, Gregg Gerson, and Carlos Olmeda.
Sigurdson, the chief success officer, said the organization serves boys from all over San Diego County, is an in-school mentoring program that hosts weekly meetings at middle schools and high schools.
“We sit in circles with the boys where teams of mentors show up each week to sit with the boys,” he said. “We introduce topics about real life stuff. We talk about divorce, alcoholism, drugs, gangs, abandonment, betrayal, and the men share their stories. We talk about what happened to us, how we felt, the decisions we made from those feelings, the price we paid for those decisions, what we wished we had done different, or what we wished was available for us, and then become that asset for the boys.”
Sigurdson said the boys hear the men being honest and vulnerable, they feel safe, and they resonate that the men have been through some of the things that the boys are going through currently. He said it creates a liminal space for transformation for these boys and they start talking about what is happening in their lives.
“Their feelings. The choices they are making. The price they are paying for those choices,” he said. “Our job is to ask them open-ended questions like, ‘How’s that working?’ ‘Is this what you want?’ ‘If we could wave a magic wand over this, what would you want different?’”
When the boys start talking about those things and new choices they could be making, the men ask if they are willing to do that for one week and see what that one new choice would do, he said.
“When they make a new choice, we set up support out of the mentors,” he said. “Support can be a phone call, a text message, reminding that kid of his commitment to himself. His new choice. Then the following week, we do a round of accountability, and check in and see if that young man did what he said he wanted to do to be the man he wants to be.”
Sigurdson said for example, with many of them, “mom is like a safe dumping ground” so they transfer their frustration and anger to the mother. He said they realize that their mom does not deserve it and they feel bad how they treat their mothers, so they find they want to change that. So, they encourage them to find goals, different ways they want to treat their mothers.
“The whole idea about Boys to Men is to meet these guys where they are,” he said. “We are not there to fix them because they are not broken. We are not there to rescue them, give them advice, and we are certainly not there to project our realities on them. It is called FRAP, and a Boys to Men circle is a no FRAP zone. No fixing, rescuing, advising, or projecting,” adding that the boys are capable.
“We are there to LAMMP,” he said. “We are there the listen, admire, model, mentor, and praise. These boys who have no one listening to them, meeting them where they are, accepting them, and no one who models what a man should look like, we are mentoring them by supporting them or praising them.”
Sigurdson said it holds trainings for men for those two acronyms to provide them skills on how to apply this to the boys.
“It is just so simple,” he said by asking them about their new haircut, new shoes, and noticing little things about the boys because they are not getting that type of interaction from men. Just subtle things that get them to lift their heads a little higher, smile, be acknowledged. It does not take a lot to get a young man feel better about himself.”
Sigurdson said with this model, every week, young boys are getting rid of their secrets, making new choices, and are getting support and accountability around those choices.
“They start feeling better about themselves,” he said. “When they feel better, they do better. We have the metrics to prove that. Their grades go up, attendance goes up. But the biggest thing we see is their discipline problems virtually stop and fall off the edge because they have this thing every week that is like a pressure valve where they are being validated for their feelings, honored for their courage, and supported for their new choices.”
Sigurdson said when they think a young man is ready, they have a 16-acre ranch on Mount Palomar where they do three-day adventure mountain weekends.
“They are framed as a right to passage,” he said. “An initiation into manhood. All the things they touched on in these circles for the months leading up to this, now instead of having an hour to touch on it, now we have three days to take the deep dive into it. The deep dive is coming to some type of resolution around the trauma, the belief, the issue. Whatever is in way. Whatever is sabotaging this young man. We facilitate them to some sort of resolution, and with that resolution comes a commitment to work through it, and an action. It all gets written down and we create a roadmap to the man he wants to be.”
Sigurdson said after the retreat, this gives them the ability to check in on how the boys are doing on their roadmaps, the decisions and commitments they made to become the man they want to be.
“They are following their own advice and we start integrating the experience they had on the mountain into the school program and into their lives,” he said. “It is a long-term proposition. We stick with these guys for years. We help them in that transition from boy to man. It is a long-term comprehensive program to manhood.”
Sigurdson said they help the boys get jobs, help them with college applications, with recruiters to get them into the armed services. “It just does not end at high school,” he said. Sigurdson said he hopes this first gala become its largest fundraiser. He said the biggest reason for the gala is celebrating 25 years of its first Boys to Men circle.
San Diego’s Dean Oliver, a mixed use and urban real estate developer is the chair of the gala and longtime supporter of Boys to Men, and Sigurdson said he has attracted high profile people to attend the gala.
“It will be at the Catamaran, on the lawn by the bay, hors d’oeuvres, a carving station, a hosted bar, Mainly Mozart String Quartet, so people can mingle around,” he said.
For more information, visit www.boystomen.org.