Now that our rebrand is complete, we’re looking toward the future of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men. We are the leading voice in the public arena advocating for males in Washington. What additional aspirations should WIBM have?
Like us, the Canadian Centre for Men and Families carries out advocacy for the well-being of boys and men. They also provide programs and services like men’s peer support groups, legal assistance, counseling, suicide prevention, and mentorship.
We spoke to Kristen Lewis, who is executive director of the Vancouver and Ottawa branches of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families. We were blown away by her empathy and insightfulness. This is easily one of the most important interview videos we’ve published. Please take ten minutes and watch our conversation with Kristen Lewis.
Below is a partial edited transcript of the video above…
A leader in Canada
Kristen Lewis: I’ve been the executive director of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families for a year now. I started as soon as I finished my masters of law degree.
CCMF has been in existence for about ten years. We’re the leading organization in the men’s advocacy space in Canada. We’ve been able to do things nationally as well as locally that no organization has done.
It has been an uphill battle, and it remains one. We remain on a shoestring compared to analogous women’s organizations, but it’s worth it. It’s worth cuts in expected salary. The sacrifice is worth it. Deeply so.
Men’s peer support groups on Zoom
Kristen Lewis: Right now what I’m most excited about in Vancouver is a deceptively simple program that’s called the Men’s Peer Support Group Program. It started with just a couple of meetings a week. It was in person before covid and then moved online during covid. Recently our main men’s peer support group volunteer and I trained up a new cohort of volunteer facilitators. Now we’re facilitating meetings five evenings a week for two hours.
These meetings are places where men from British Columbia and also from other parts of Canada gather to share their stories and feel less alone. They also share resources about legal battles they might be going through.
It seems like something as simple as men gathering in a Zoom room in a routine way wouldn’t do that much. But the men are kind of the base of support for our organization. As you know, government funders in both the United States and Canada remain resistant to funding men’s organizations. Private sector donations are hard to rely on. But when you start building a base of membership — and a lot of our men don’t have much money, but they come to those meetings, they know what our organization does…We support them and they support us. It kind of creates a momentum of feeling less alone. And it’s like grassroots organizing.
An opportunity to develop leadership skills
Kristen Lewis: We ran these meetings over the Christmas holiday when a lot of dads are without their children. Male suicide rates tend to be higher at this time. The meetings are a place for men to come and hear each other and break down their sense of isolation.
The meetings are also helpful for me. I’ll attend them, even if it’s just at the beginning, to get a sense of what’s happening on the ground. The men are my eyes and ears in terms of policy developments that are problematic. I might have a sense of how men are impacted by the high-level legal structure. But I don’t always know how an entity like the Office of the Children’s Lawyer, for example, which does child testimony, is affecting men. I wouldn’t necessarily know how all of these elements of the administrative state are deploying policies without hearing about these men’s experiences.
Another reason I’m excited about those meetings is they’re an opportunity for the volunteer facilitators to exercise leadership and develop leadership skills. Men are lifting each other up. People who have been through something hard and then have had sufficient healing to feel capable of helping others are getting the chance to do that.
CCMF is not a religious organization, but the meetings provide a place where men gain a sense of meaning, which is something that’s often destroyed when family gets taken away. It’s a place for men to go where they know people aren’t inherently against men. I think the peer support group meetings offer a healing form of meaning making.
Legal assistance and subsidized counseling
Blair Daly: What else happens at the Vancouver branch of CCMF besides facilitating the men’s peer support groups?
Kristen Lewis: Our organization has two sides. One is the service delivery side, which the men’s peer support groups belong to. We also have a legal clinic, which is a free place where men can come and ask legal questions of a volunteer lawyer. That works well. We also have subsidized counseling that’s available. The other part of what CCMF does is public advocacy…[Hear more from Kristen Lewis by watching the video.]
See related: ‘Men of Compassion’ Support Group Is Helping Men in Spokane Heal | Interview with Ed Ashley
See related: Female Professor in Vancouver B.C. Wins ‘Controversy Prize’ for Research on Male Victims of Domestic Violence