Promoting Healthy Boys

This is a project to train and support staff who work with young boys (K – 5th grade) on how they can promote healthy boys, and create environments that allow and encourage healthy expressions of masculinity to emerge and be expressed in a context of gender equity.

• Boys are inherently loving, caring and sensitive; 
• Boys are exposed to harmful gender norms and stereotypes, starting at a young age; 
• Boys benefit from unearned male privileges starting at a young age, and at the expense of girls, transgender and gender non-conforming children, leading to gender inequality in families, schools, and communities; 
• Harmful forms of masculinity continue to foster social, cultural, academic, political, and economic under-achievement, disease and violence; 
• We need to change the way we socialize boys in order to create a more safe, healthy and equitable future.