How We Got Here
Our Founder’s Journey
After over two decades of working on issues related to violence against women and girls and seeing the consistent increase of programs for women and girls globally, treatment for victims of abuse, shelters for victims, I have seen so much progress in the areas of girls’ education, women in the workforce and women’s rights.
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And yet, I see online child exploitation, sex trafficking and domestic violence numbers continue to rise, with little real progress in sight.
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Despite global efforts to help victims, to capture criminals engaged in some of these nefarious acts, we still barely scratch the surface of the problem.
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Most of our programs today, and I would estimate, over 99%, focus on helping women and girls. And yet it is also men and boys, who are clearly struggling; they are the 93% of our incarcerated, they are the 75% of our suicides, they are the market for over 8 billion images of Child porn (USA). ​
​Once I started researching the crisis of men and boys, I was profoundly grieved at what I found and the generations of boys we continue to neglect. Did you know that 90% of our incarcerated come from fatherless homes? Where are the programs for our fatherless boys?
How did we get here? How did some men become perpetrators? Could they also be the victims? The story usually starts with the criminality but maybe it is time to go further back and start at the beginning with the story of the boy. How did they get here? Where did it start? Where are the programs addressing the root causes leading to this?
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It starts with a different story. It is the young, vulnerable boys and men that are being strategically targeted by ‘extremist’ groups, drug cartels, the porn industry, and other nefarious actors. They are vulnerable to sophisticated online targeted campaigns and the results are staggering. Societal branding and negative narratives only reinforce the destructive cycle. Statistics show that fatherless boys are deeply and tragically impacted by a father's absence. Yet our policies rarely address this.
While we spend endless resources reacting to the topical, the after-effects, the victims, the criminality, we are missing the solution which is addressing the root causes. The men and boys are lost in the treatment and yet vilified in the narratives.
What is mental health? How do current culture, media, narratives, and societal breakdowns impact it? What does healthy masculinity look like? What does the requirement for societal transformation look like? In families, in schools, across communities, religions and countries.
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This crisis impacts everyone.
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We need to reconstruct not only how we address this but with a new perspective.
The Men Collaborative vision has thus begun.
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Rema DuPont
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