[00:00:01] Madeline: Hello and welcome to SHE SOARS. Her Voice. Her Rights.

[00:00:05] Amal: We are CARE Canada’s Youth Champions, a group of young people across Canada who are passionate advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights.

[00:00:13] Lauren: We’re excited to discuss and raise awareness about young women’s rights and choices in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

[00:00:20] Amal: Together, we will explore how these global issues connect to our lives as Canadian youth and discover ways in which we can all take action.

[00:00:27] Lauren: We will also talk about the SHE SOARS* project, which improves access to health and education, which are areas we want to see change in.

[00:00:34] Everyone: Join us!

[00:00:38] Lauren: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the SHE SOARS podcast. This November we’re going to be focusing on the theme of engaging men and boys with topics of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights. The 16 Days of Activism campaign against Gender-Based Violence is from November 25th to December 10th. So in the SHE SOARS project, and just widely recognized, men and boys are needed as equal partners and key players in shifting harmful gender norms and attitudes towards women and girls, including gender-based violence. A bit more context about the SHE SOARS approach is the engagement of adolescent boys through role model boys groups where they can access information about Sexual and Reproductive Health, life skills, and find the space and support to develop positive attitudes and behaviors towards women and girls. 

[00:01:23] Lauren: In addition, men are engaged in groups where parents learn skills for open communication with their children and participate in community activities where they discuss and identify which norms they view as harmful and would like to see changed. Then they share their learnings with the whole community, for example, through role-playing situations. So this topic is important for a few reasons, and it is often overlooked. The whole community has to buy in to change the norms, and we really strongly believe that equal partnership is needed between boys and girls, and men and women to achieve gender equality. Okay, so now I’m going to introduce our guests on this podcast. We are joined by folks from Yorktown Family Services and the Mindful Fathering program. We have Karen Blake joining us as well as Rodrigo Moreno. Karen is the Community-Based Violence Prevention Manager and Rodrigo was involved with the Mindful Fathering Program for 14 years as a facilitator with a continued role as a consultant and trainer. And Karen and Rodrigo, I will pass it over to you to introduce your impressive backgrounds. 

[00:02:24] Karen: Rodrigo, would you like to go first?

[00:02:28] Rodrigo: Okay. I just want to say that I grew up in a household where my father always talked about equality and everybody having equal access. And so I grew up with that frame of mind and I think my work now reflects that. I lived in an inner-city neighborhood in Toronto and saw some of the struggles of the residents that lived around me, including us. And so I think that my work is really shaped by a lot of my experience and working with men. And because I am a man, I take this work very passionately and seriously. And so working for Yorktown, working as a facilitator, and working with men around violence and offering alternatives to be able to have healthier relationships.

[00:03:11] Karen: My name is Karen Blake and I have been supervising three programs at Yorktown for the last 20 years. One program near and dear to my heart is Here To Help, which is a group for women and children who have been impacted by being exposed to family violence. I also supervise a group for youth that are at risk to being taken into care. And the other program that I had the privilege and the opportunity to help design is Mindful Fathering. Mindful Fathering is a group for fathers that have demonstrated abusive behavior to their current and ex-partners and have children who have been exposed to violence. Prior to working at Yorktown, I worked at Women’s Habitat in the outreach division, working with children and youth, and I help design healthy relationship group programs for boys and girls. And so Mindful Fathering, when the funding came, I was like the first to say, let’s do it. Later on we will talk a bit more about why we decided to design and develop Mindful Fathering. 

[00:04:18] Lauren: Awesome. Thank you both for those introductions and a bit more background on the Mindful Fathering Program. We’re really excited to have you here and it was awesome for us to find out about an organization that’s doing some similar work to the SHE SOARS project within Canada. So it would be great if you could please tell us a bit more about the Mindful Fathering program and why and how the program got started and what its main aims are. 

[00:04:39] Karen: Absolutely. For decades, Yorktown Family Services has been providing counselling services and shelter services for women and children affected by violence. However, we became increasingly concerned that by only working directly with women and children, we were putting all the responsibility on the families to solve the problems created by men using violence. The women and children were asking us, what support do you have for my partner? Why can’t my dad come here too? My dad needs help. It was clear that we were missing a very important part of the picture. In 2007, we received funding to create a program that would include fathers not only for the sake of their partners and children, but also to support them in becoming the fathers they wanted to be. Fathers are invited to develop a personal vision for change to increase awareness of attitudes regarding masculinity and gender roles that contribute to partner abuse and child abuse, learn effective ways to deal with anger and aggression, and use mindfulness to help regulate emotions and learn new skills in parenting and relationships. And here we are, 18 years later. We’re very proud to have this program.

[00:05:50] Lauren: Awesome. Thank you for elaborating on that. So you have touched on this, but what are some of the specific approaches used within the program?

[00:05:57] Rodrigo: That’s a very good question because I think we have many important keys to the program. I think creating a safe space for men to come and feel comfortable and be honest about their journey through what they’re going through, what they’ve been through and where they’re heading. We provide a meal every week actually for the fathers that come in and we’ve seen how it creates this openness, this comfort with them. And then we can get down to the real conversations. We know from the feedback of our fathers that we’re creating a space where they feel comfortable to talk about topics that are not discussed in their regular daily lives. You can’t go to the bar with your friends and talk about your problems in your home, your challenges with your children. So we offer a space that is really unique and where fathers can come and really talk about the things that they want to get off their chest. So we see it as a very growth-oriented spot for them to be able to come and share openly about their challenges. We don’t judge them in any way. We offer a very supportive environment for growth. 

[00:07:06] Rodrigo: We do challenge our fathers and our participants because we find that they may be rooted in some more traditional beliefs that we need to examine and see what the outcomes of these beliefs have been for them because obviously things haven’t been working. So what are the alternatives we can offer that may have a better outcome in the way you parent and in the way that you relate to your partner?

[00:07:30] Lauren: Awesome. Thank you. That sounds like such an innovative and needed program. I haven’t heard of many organizations doing this type of work so that’s really awesome to learn more about. Bouncing off of that, what are some of the major impacts you have noticed within the families that you’re working with, specifically with the fathers, and anything else that you would like to elaborate on?

[00:07:49] Karen: Sure. We had one father where his child was taken into care and the mother wasn’t in the picture. There was some very high-risk substance abuse going on. They had split up and he came to our group wanting custody of his child. He had lived on the streets, and he was a young dad, maybe 19 or 20 years old, and he came to our group. By the end of the group, he did a lot of other programs, but he said Mindful Fathering really helped and supported him. He ended up getting custody of his two-year-old. And he sang at our Annual General Meeting (AGM) one year. He brought his baby, went on the guitar, and just thanked everyone for the support he had. And he is doing so well, and he is in another relationship and has another child. He checks in with us and says how happy he is and that it really changed his life.

[00:08:42] Karen: You can only imagine that working in this field and hearing that feedback because often we don’t get a lot of feedback. And Rodrigo, you have many stories you could probably share. 

[00:08:53] Rodrigo: Absolutely. When I think of the impacts, I think of what our goals are as an organization and as a program for our fathers. I think that we want to begin to have them look at new ways of parenting, new ways of relating, because we’re talking about systemic issues that men are raised with, for example, that we believe we should be the sole income providers as men in our households. And when we’re not, things fall apart for us because we’re so rooted in these ideas and beliefs, and we feel that we don’t have other options, creating conflict within our relationships. So when we talk about impacts, we want to be able to begin to change those ideas around masculinity, around men and around parenting. That we don’t always have to have those roles, that we can play other important roles in family structure, that we can stay home and look after our children if that’s what is needed, and the outcome is going to benefit our family. So we want to push the boundaries to begin to change the way that we see these stereotypes and how they have affected us, how they have kept us prisoners as men to the ideas that society’s expectation is on us. 

[00:10:10] Rodrigo: And, you know, we start to see these with stories that come to light. For example, we had a young father who had shared custody. And when his son spent time with him, it was his job to get his boy out to school every day. And one of those days his son comes down with a pink shirt on and his dad was taken aback and looks at him look like you can’t wear that to school. You know that isn’t a male color and that’s not what you’re supposed to do. The boy kept saying, well you know, today I’m wearing this because it’s a national anti-bullying day, and I’m going to wear this because I want to be a part of all of this. And little by little, his dad started to question himself and understand that we have to let go of these ideas of what is male and female, that things shouldn’t be so rigid. And he shared that story with us, which was very eye-opening. And we have so much to learn. We are in a position that our children can teach us so much. And so it showed this level of being flexible and accommodating which goes against the old traditional form of ‘you do as I say, as a father, and that’s that.’ So we see some major changes going on, some impactful that benefit the family and the relationship as well. 

[00:11:32] Lauren: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I found some really interesting parallels when you were speaking between the SHE SOARS project and the work that you do as well. Specifically, when you’re talking about breaking down those gender norms and looking to children and youth to help bring down those barriers and teach the older generation the way that they want things to go. So that’s really interesting to hear and definitely heartwarming and inspiring. 

[00:11:53] Karen: Our fathers say like, “Why didn’t I have this course or class when I was a teenager?” And we were saying that’s what we want to do. We want to get more prevention younger. And to reach out to those boys before they become fathers. I think many of our dads have said that like they’re so appreciative to have this group, but they said, “If you could have just been around when I was in high school, it would have really made a difference.”

[00:12:21] Lauren: Totally. I can definitely see that. You have touched on this a bit, but I think this is a great segue. So why do you think it is so essential for men and boys to have their own space to be engaged in building healthy relationships and breaking down these harmful gender roles and attitudes we have been discussing?

[00:12:38] Rodrigo: I think that it’s essential to kind of begin at a young age. So, you know, we learn at a very young age how we carry ourselves as men and as women in this society. Especially as men, we tend to stick to those ideas. If those ideas are thrown away from us or we don’t have them, we tend to panic because we don’t have an alternative to what we were taught. And so change is fearful. Change can be impactful in the way that it leads us to not being active at all in our sons’ lives. So the idea here is to really begin to teach young boys how we can relate in healthy relationships. As they become men, how to respect women, how to value their opinions, how a problem doesn’t only have one solution, and that a collaborative effort tends to bring out more positive resolutions to problems. And so I think Mindful Fathering is critical in the sense that we are working with men who are fathers. It is up to them to teach their young boys these new ways of being and these new tools around how to treat female friends. And so in doing that, we take the blame off of the women because it feels like the girl should be protected.

[00:14:01] Rodrigo: The father protects his daughters a lot more than he protects his sons. And I lived that in my family where my father was overlooking my sisters all the time. I was told as a young boy that I should not leave my sister and her boyfriend alone. So I had to go in there to be with them and make sure that my sister was okay. But that was never done for my brother. So there is a sense of protecting girls from men instead of teaching men to be respectful to women. So that is where I think Mindful Fathering is critical in that beginning of a process of working with young boys through their fathers. 

[00:14:44] Karen: You said so much, and it was so important. The piece I would add is toxic masculinity. And even though we have evolved, we still need to do a lot of work on that because we still have many dads that come in and it’s not okay to cry. It’s not okay to show emotions. This is what I have been taught. It’s many different cultures of dads. And so we need to do a lot of work in that area. And by not shaming, blaming or creating judgment, but by supporting these dads, these boys to be themselves. They can cry. They can do anything. They can be anything they want to be. Dream big. And I think Rodrigo always says this quite well, it doesn’t cost anything to dream.

[00:15:30] Rodrigo: Yeah, the whole masculinity piece is huge. I work with men and that is kind of the passion that I have. And we work with men in trying to change some of these ideas, maybe beginning to express yourself instead of bottling things up. You’re seen as weak if you express any emotion other than anger and happiness as a man. So we’re taught to really bottle things up. And when I push that envelope and we do role plays – I think you were mentioning a bit of role plays in the work that you do with SHE SOARS – I get men to try and express themselves. And it is incredible how you could see the inability to do that. Even repeating after me becomes hard because of all these negative stigmas around what a man is viewed as by expressing his emotions.

[00:16:24] Rodrigo: And so learning to express yourself is like learning a new language. It doesn’t come easy and the only way that you’re going to get better at it is by practice. Saying these things over and over again to be able to then say it freely when you feel them. So we have a lot of work, as Karen said, ahead of us. These are some of the things that we do to help our male participants, through our fathers, to hopefully set role models for the children. They are bringing up their boys so that they can be a softer, gentler version of themselves. And it doesn’t mean that they’re weak. Actually, to me, I see it as being brave. To be able to put yourself in a vulnerable place is actually a sign of bravery, not weakness.

[00:17:13] Lauren: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insight on this topic, showcasing just how important it is to carve out this space for men and boys. I think all the stories you shared really highlight the different impacts this can have not only for men and boys, but also the whole family. It also goes to show how needed this type of programming is in every country, not just certain countries that the SHE SOARS project is working in, and not just in Canada. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. Are there any final points or anything you wanted to add before we close out?

[00:17:44] Rodrigo: I was going to say that it’s unfortunate that we live at a place where we fund programs after things have happened. So we need evidence that, you know, our society’s not doing well to be able to fund. And I think Karen was getting a little bit onto this, that we need funding to begin to prevent things from happening. We don’t want incidents and then doing patchwork, right? I’m fortunate to work with Mindful Fathering and help the fathers teach their young boys, but I’m also seeing through the other work I do, men who have not been given those new types of thinking and how we’re doing the patchwork to help them out later on in life. So, we wish that we could begin to do some more preventative work without having to show that proof that something is going terribly wrong to be able to get the resources that we require. So we continue to push for more about prevention. Why do we have to wait until things happen?

[00:18:46] Karen: Yeah. And thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk about our program and to learn about yours. Because this is something that we need to do more often is reach out and let everyone know that we need to start this work earlier, not later.

[00:19:01] Lauren: Yeah, I fully agree with those points. That is a great concept to bring up of how we really need the systemic change in breaking down the cycles and not just the Band-Aid solution. So thank you for including that as well. We are just so pleased that we got to connect with you on this and I’m sure that there will be further opportunities for collaboration down the road.

[00:19:18] Karen: Thank you so much for having us here to present Mindful Fathering. It has been an honor and a privilege. 

[00:19:24] Rodrigo: Thank you so much. We really appreciate opportunity to be able to showcase the program. We continue to expand it in providing it to other agencies. We realize the importance of it. We realize we have a lot of work to do and part of it is sharing it with others to inform and make them aware to join our battle. 

[00:19:45] Lauren: Thank you so much. I am just so glad that we got to connect on this and talk about the parallels between your program and SHE SOARS. You shared a lot of inspiring and heartwarming stories that we’re so excited to get to share with all of our listeners. So you can stay tuned for part two of this episode where we’re going to be discussing how men and boys are engaged in the SHE SOARS project to increase gender equality in Uganda and the exciting activities that are happening to increase women and girls’ rights and health. 

[00:20:10] Amal: Thanks for listening to SHE SOARS. If you liked this episode, please share it on social media, connect with us in the comments or give us a like.

[20:19] Lauren: Make sure to catch our next episode by subscribing to our channel and following us wherever you get your podcasts.

[20:25] Madeline: Follow @carecanada on Instagram for updates on our show and the project.

[00:20:29] Lauren: SHE SOARS stands for Sexual and reproductive Health and Economic empowerment supporting Out-of-school Adolescent girls’ Rights and Skills in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.

[20:40] Madeline: The project is funded by Global Affairs Canada. Check out our global partner organizations:

[20:46] Amal: Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Restless Development for even more project updates.

[00:20:54] Lauren: Thanks again for listening. Until next time!