Blair Daly of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men was the featured speaker at the Rotary Club of Yakima’s meeting on February 15. Co-presenting with Blair was WIBM advocacy partner Jamie Holter, who spoke from her perspective as the mother of two sons. The meeting was held at the Yakima Convention Center.
The Rotary Club of Yakima live-streamed the meeting on their Facebook page. That video is online here and embedded below.
At 17:55 in the video is where Blair and Jamie are introduced by Jennifer Bliesner, who is a past president of the Rotary Club. Blair and Jamie present for 25 minutes and then take questions from the audience.
As a speaker gift, the Rotary Club generously made a donation to Northwest Harvest in WIBM’s name.
Articles mentioned in the presentation above: The Grant Funding Deficit for Washington’s Boys and Men and There is a 50 to 1 Ratio of Female to Male Advocacy in Washington
Excerpt from the presentation
Below is an excerpt of the transcript from the presentation.
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you.
These are the four main points I want to make over the next 20 minutes or so.
The first is that there’s actually a broad set of issues that we could call “boys and men’s issues”. These are areas where males are struggling. Of course, everyone’s issues affect everyone else, so really everyone’s issues are everyone’s issues. But many of us are familiar with the concept of ‘gender gaps’, which typically highlight female disadvantage, and what I’ll be speaking about are areas that could be called male gender gaps, or disparities affecting Washington’s male population.
My second point is one that might sound strange to some, but I believe that boys and men are a population group that is pretty severely lacking advocacy in the public arena.
My third point is that Washington Initiative for Boys and Men exists to meet that advocacy need, in a credible way, providing trustworthy information, having relationships with people who have real expertise on these issues, and taking an approach that is middle-of-the-road, not based in anger or resentment, moderate, nonpartisan.
And my last point is that we are wide open for cooperation, and we want to work with any of you who are interested in working together. Later I’ll share some examples of what that could look like…