Men Stopping Violence

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Co-founder

of Zambian

Center Spends Month Training at MSV

Stephen Bwala Mbati, one of the founders of the Zambia Men's Resource Centre (ZAMREC) in Lusaka, Zambia, spent four weeks this summer working with Men Stopping Violence trainers and facilitators.

ZAMREC was established by Mbati and co-founder Stanislaus Phiri to work with men to address violence against women. Previously, Mbati worked for the YWCA, overseeing the main drop-in center, where women came to seek assistance and shelter.

"Battered women would come, sometimes with their children," he said. "Any problem they brought in had a complement of abuse. "

Mbati said that in 2004 he and Phiri began working on a men's network to address male batterers. The result was the establishment of ZAMREC in 2007, which is independent of the YWCA but continues to collaborate with that organization.

"We've been building structures," said Mbati. That building phase, he said, includes looking for funding, and both conducting and participating in training, locally and internationally.

While at Men Stopping Violence, Mbati attended Men's Education Program classes, participated in the Summer Seminar Series, and met with men who were doing the work. He said that the experience helped reinforce his plans for ZAMREC and that he learned valuable lessons about organizing programs and partnerships.

"The model MSV is using is the exact thing we want to do with some modifications," said Mbati.

The Internship

Men Use Seminars, Projects
to Educate Themselves, Others

A regular, highly anticipated event has been taking place at the Men Stopping Violence (MSV) office since the fall of 2007: The presentations of community projects created and implemented by MSV interns.

These evenings are informative, moving and inspiring. The project presentations represent proactive steps taken by young men to initiate and participate in critical discussions about violence against women.

Another MSV initiative, the Seminar Series, is required for the interns and is also open to other men in the community. These opportunities allow men to begin examining their own roles as participants in a culture that devalues women and as possible agents in changing that culture.

As intern John Abraham said during his project presentation on pornography, “Let's find our mind sets.”

Most of Men Stopping Violence's efforts involve working to expand the base of male allies who want to, in ways large and small, join this struggle. There is, potentially, a lot of room for growth, because very few men are doing this work. Throughout MSV's history, the Internship has been one way of educating and supporting those men who do.

For the four young men who completed the Internship in the spring of 2008, the process of understanding how men's socialization supports a culture of violence against women was what resonated the most. In addition to Abraham, the most recent Internship graduates are Matthew Jones, Darshan Patel and Michael Robinson. Abraham, Jones and Patel are medical students at Morehouse School of Medicine; Robinson is a poet and activist.

Their presentations came after 15 weeks, during which they explored their own use of abusive and controlling behaviors; examined their belief systems; did scholarly work on the causes and MSV's philosophical framework; attended Men's Education Classes; attended seminars; worked at the MSV office; and created the community projects.

The projects, which included examinations of men's use of pornography, misogyny in popular music, and patriarchal issues among gay men, reflected MSV's principles of both cultural critique and self-examination.

For his project, Jones invited other medical students to participate in a focus group that examined perceptions of women in popular music. Both Jones and focus group members were surprised at the prevalence of messages in music that promoted power and control over women. "It is very difficult for men to picture their lives without being in a position of dominance over women," said Jones, a third-year medical student.

He said that the MSV Internship was important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which it allowed him to examine his own behavior.

“It allowed me to critique my personality,” he said. “In medicine, a lot of us are Type A. I found a lot of these qualities of Type A on the list of abuses. I appreciate the opportunity to do some introspection.”

All of the interns said that they appreciated the opportunity for self-examination. Engaging in that kind of work while in community with other men, in classes and seminars, deepened their Internship experience.

“Being in a space where I was observing men's pain and their connection to their history made me have more compassion,” said Robinson.

For his project, Robinson organized a daylong retreat where a collective of gay activists discussed the ways in which gay men perpetuate sexism and benefit from male privilege. Out of that meeting, the participants drafted a document that both identified and challenged how gay men view women.

While many gay men don't believe they benefit from male privilege, the ATL Queer Men's Collective concluded this belief has led to a “disregard of how queer men … are still socialized as ‘men,' a perspective that largely influences our reality and way of being.”

First-Ever Benefit Concert

Features Scholar, Activist Bernice Johnson Reagon

Men Stopping Violence's "Listening to Women's Voices" benefit on May 17 was both a concert and a conversation, as Bernice Johnson Reagon, Doria Roberts, Kitty Snyder and Theresa Davis gathered the more than 200 attendees into a circle of song and poetry.

This very special event at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta also included a pre-concert reception and brief presentations about the work of Men Stopping Violence. Jenn Hobby of radio station Q100 hosted the evening.

Dr. Reagon, a singer, scholar, and activist, performed in the "Songtalk" tradition, integrating storytelling with song. Perhaps no other artist at work today better illustrates the transformative power and instruction of traditional African-American music and cultural history.

Before Dr. Reagon's performance, acclaimed singer-songwriter Snyder kicked off the evening, setting a reflective mood. Singer-songwriter Roberts and spoken-word artist Davis, followed with sets that used words and music that spoke directly to injustice and violence against women.

Read an interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon.

MSV Begins Piloting

Mentor Training Program

Atlanta -- Communities are increasingly calling on more men to become strong role models for boys, and Men Stopping Violence (MSV) has created a program that helps mentors support academic success for boys and increased safety for women and girls.

Drawing on lessons learned from working with men for more than two decades, MSV has established the Mentor Training Program (MTP), which trains college sudents to work with high school freshman who are having disciplinary problems and are at risk for dropping out. The MTP trains mentors to rely on strategies that value education while challenging destructive definitions of masculinity.

MSV began piloting the project in the fall of 2007. Eight men from Morehouse College trained with MSV and continue to receive support and guidance. The mentors have begun regular meetings with eight boys from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, and each mentor has been paired with a mentee. The project is being supervised by Ulester Douglas, MSV Director of Training, and coordinated by Morehouse College student Joseph Drummond, who recently completed the MSV Internship Program.

Success in the MTP will be measured by:

Improved academic performance (indicated by higher report card grades and standardized test scores)
Increased attendance rates
Improved behavior, including fewer disciplinary referrals and less violent and disruptive behavior

Men Stopping Violence would like to extend special thanks to to Booker T. Washington High School and Communities in Schools for facilitating and supporting this project.

Studies Evaluate

MSV Initiatives

Articles have been published on two evaluations of Men Stopping Violence initiatives.

An article appeared in the October 2006 issue of the journal Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice reporting findings from a study that evaluated the Violence Prevention Mentoring Project, a program conducted by Men Stopping Violence from 1995 to 2000. The article -- "Preliminary Findings for an Outcome Evaluation of an Intimate Partner Prevention Program for Adjudicated, African American Adolescent Males" -- was authored by Laura F. Salazar, who conducted the study, and Sarah L. Cook. (Access the article.)

More recently, an article reporting findings from an evaluation of an MSV-implemented coordinated community response in two Georgia counties appeared in the October 2007 issue of Journal of Family Violence. This article -- "Examinnig the Behavior of a System: An Outcome Evaluation of a Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence" -- was authored by Salazar, James G. Emshoff, Charlene K. Baker, and Terrence “Red” Crowley, former Director of Men's Education for Men Stopping Violence. (Read an abstract of the article.)

The Violence Prevention Mentoring Project (VPMP) had two goals. First, it aimed to offer an intervention program to juvenile males in the DeKalb County, Georgia, criminal-legal system who were identified as having a problem with male violence against women and girls. Second, it worked to expose judges, probation officers and others involved in the criminal-legal system to MSV's analysis of the problem of male violence against women in the hope of changing their attitudes and influencing systems change.

Juveniles in the program attended five sessions: a two-hour initial meeting; a visit to the regular Court Class taught by MSV for men who were arrested for battering in DeKalb County; two sessions of the 24-week batterers' intervention classes conducted by MSV; and a review class.

The evaluation of the VPMP, conducted by Salazar as part of her doctoral studies, spanned a period from June 1999 to May 2000. It concluded that Men Stopping Violence was effective in educating juvenile males about male violence against women and somewhat successful in changing their attitudes about women in general. Also, the VPMP was successful in gaining access to a particular segment of the criminal-legal system, and garnering support from the personnel for the program, although it remained unclear whether there was widespread attitude change among personnel.

The study of the coordinated community response (CCR) evaluated whether a CCR implemented by MSV in two Georgia counties would be effective at increasing criminal-legal system sanctions for male domestic violence offenders. The evaluation revealed that there was a significant increase in arrests of male offenders in both counties. However, law enforcement agencies also arrested more women following the intervention.

TIMM Conference Draws Attendees From 8 States

Twenty-eight people dedicated to the work of ending male violence against women attended Men Stopping Violence's Training Institute for Mobilizing Men (TIMM) conference February 27 through March 1, 2008, in Atlanta.

Men Stopping Violence, in consultation with the New York-based organization A Call to Men, has created TIMM, which helps state coalitions against intimate partner violence organize and educate men who want to work to end violence against women.

The recent conference was the first of two such trainings for the eight participating state coalitions. In addition to the training conferences, TIMM provides in-depth assistance and support to the coalitions as these groups create programs and protocols for working with men. TIMM works with both the leadership of the coalitions and the men with whom they are working or planning to work with.

This project supports the men who become organizers and the coalitions who lead them through conference calls, a listserv, the sharing of best practices and organizing materials, and face-to-face meetings. To be included in the project, participating coalitions had to meet a specific set of criteria that signalled their readiness to do the work of organizing men around the issue of violence against women.

TIMM, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), began in the Fall of 2007 and ends in the summer of 2009. At the end of the project, each of the participating coalitions will have a men's initiative that is sustainable, effective in engaging men, accountable to battered women's advocates, and a model for other states interested in starting the work of engaging men.

The eight participating state coalitions are: Idaho, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, West Virgina and Wisconsin.

Community Restoration

Program Marks 20 Years

of Support, Advocacy

This year marks the 20th anniversary of MSV's innovative Community Restoration Program (CRP).

CRP is a community education and advocacy team committed to the work of ending violence against women. The group's original intent was to offer men who ongoing connection and support and an opportunity to offer service to Men Stopping Violence. CRP continues that mission but since its founding has taken on a greater advocacy role in the community.

“'(CRP) allows me to reinforce my commitment to treat all folks, including my partner and all women, with fairness and dignity and trust,” said Bill Kirksey, co-leader of CRP. “Second, it sets an example for the men in my life. And third, it allows me to work toward creating a safe and more just world.”