Building Relationships

Relationships are essential.

Ending gender-based violence (GBV) requires collective participation, leadership, and buy-in, all of which require meaningful relationships—relationships with individuals and groups, community members, youth, local leaders, government officials, policymakers, businesses, nonprofits, schools, faith leaders, and more. These relationships, when sustainable over time and grounded in shared interests, create change in our communities.

We must meet men where they’re at.

Meeting men “where they’re at”—in terms of their experiences, interests, culture, and spaces—is critical to build meaningful relationships. And, as in all relationships, including those with men, active listening, open communication, trust, appreciation for diversity in culture and thought, and respect are key elements to building relationships in communities.

Questions to Consider

• Where do men meet and connect in your community?
• What relationships do you (your organizations, families, schools, and more) have with men across the community?
• What does it mean for you to meet men “where they are at” in your community?

Community Readiness Assessments

Assessment identifies points of engagement.

Assessing the awareness, receptiveness, and capacity of a community and ourselves to end gender-based violence (GBV) is an important step in planning for action. Identifying how prepared we are as communities, organizations, and individuals is critical to engage men meaningfully and sustainably.

Communities have different needs, resources, and readiness.

Let’s think about communities first. In a community where rates of gender-based violence are high and access to victim service resources are low, community members may not be ready to focus their time, energy and efforts to end GBV because their immediate need is support and resources to navigate the impact of victimization. Understanding the needs of the community, addressing their needs, and supporting their process to become ready to engage men in ending GBV will ensure successful outcomes in the work to engage men.

It’s critical to assess our own readiness, too.

Let’s go inward and think about personal readiness. As leaders, mentors, facilitators, and advocates for ending GBV, we have a responsibility to reflect upon and understand our own willingness to adopt new behaviors. We, too, live in a culture with systemic gender inequality and oppression that disempowers individuals based on gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, race, disability, and more. Assessing, understanding, and shifting our personal attitudes, beliefs, language, and behaviors deepens our commitment and models social change among those we are building relationships with to end GBV.

Questions to Consider

• What information, support, or training do key community stakeholders need to take meaningful actions to to engage men?
• How prepared are you to work with men in your community? What level of understanding do you have of masculinity in the context of preventing and responding to GBV?

Community Action Teams

Structure enables sustainability. Consistency enables trust

To build trust, our initiatives and collaboration must be sustainable and continuous. To create this sustainability, it’s essential to build teams of individuals from diverse sectors in communities who are willing to share power and resources around a common goal of engaging men to end GBV. We use the term Community Action Team (CAT) to describe this structure for engaged partners to come together with clear roles, responsibilities, and goals. Key partners can include: Community members; youth; local leaders; government officials; policy makers; businesses; nonprofits; schools; faith leaders; and more.

Teams create accountability for initiatives and opportunities for men to engage.

The work of the collective is not about coming to a meeting but coming together to develop action plans, facilitate initiatives, build engagement for programs, create campaigns to end GBV, and evaluate success. Full participation of engaged members supports community buy-in and critical connections across our communities. Additionally, these teams create clear pathways and roles for men to contribute their time, talent, and desire to be a part of the solution to end GBV, counteracting the narrative that men don’t want to be involved.

Diverse partnerships inform meaningful and informed initiatives.

Diversity in perspective and representation from the community on a Community Action Team can provide a deeper understanding of the men in your community, especially where they interact, what services they seek, and what challenges they navigate. The information can be helpful in your relationship building and program development. These partnerships also ensure that messaging and resources reach men who have been marginalized by our systems, such as GBTQ+ men.

Questions to Consider

• What relationships do you have with the various stakeholders in your community who work with men? Who do you believe is needed on the team?
• What clarity of purpose, structure, and roles can you implement on your CAT to ensure its success?
• Do you have a designated staff to provide continuous relationship building for your Community Action Team?
• What training or support does my team need to engage a diverse group of people (in terms of race, sexuality, and more)?

Strategic Planning

Vision requires reflection and structure.

Strategic plans are like a roadmap for a trip. They lay out our communities’ goals, activities to reach these goals, and who will facilitate those activities. Additionally, these plans detail projected outcomes and evaluation tools to measure success utilizing information learned during the community readiness assessments. Strategic plans should be developed in deep partnership with the community so that plans are created “by and for” the community as much as possible. This collective participation ensures realistic goals, activities, and outcomes and community support for the implementation of activities to engage men to end GBV.

Our efforts must be adaptable and sustainable.

Reviewing and adjusting the plan while implementing and facilitating programming is a critical process. Think about that cross country trip again. If you reach a road that is closed for repairs, the map helps you determine another road that will help you continue on your journey and reach your destination. The same is true for strategic plans. For Engaging Men, when challenges inevitably arise such as resistance or staff turnover, it’s critical to have established meaningful relationships to maintain progress and ensure adjustments incorporate diverse input.

Questions to Consider

• In what ways can you integrate diverse community representation into the strategic planning process?
• What change does your community want to see in 5, 10, or 20 years? How can your plan reflect an achievable path to get there?