Preventing domestic violence within collectivist cultures: A community-based well-being group for men.

The Men's Well-being Group (WBG) offers a 10-session community-based, peer- support program to foster men's mental health, healthy relationship skills, and build commitment to violence prevention. Emerging from Calgary’s Latino community, a facilitator training program was delivered by the Alberta Men’s Network in the summer of 2022, which included four additional ethno-cultural communities. Through a partnership with the University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work, community based participatory action research was used to evaluate the facilitator training and included surveys, focus groups, and narrative interviews. The community leaders (N=8) from diverse ethnocultural communities who completed the facilitator training provided their insights and recommendations on the adaptability and relevance of the WBG to their own cultural and faith communities. All of the participants shared that providing men with culturally appropriate spaces is essential to enhancing their well-being and fostering healthy relationships. According to the men’s evaluations, community leaders were able to build ties with other men and help reduce barriers faced by isolated men when seeking support. This poster provides an overview of the Well-Being Group will be shared, as well as the implications of community-based interventions for well-being that utilize practices that are culturally relevant.

Presenters:

Noemi Ramirez Escobar, BSW Student, University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work
Sarah Thomas, BSW, Project Coordinator, University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work

Arya Boustani, Community Leader

Liza Lorenzetti, Ph.D, Project Lead, University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work

Sebastian Benavides, Community Leader
Kamal Khatiwada, Community Leader
Jun Naraval, Community Leader

Badri Karki, Community Leader
Jeff Halvorsen, Ph.D, Research Coordinator, University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work

White Men Learning to Ally: Infographic Series

Six white men who were identified by Black, Indigenous, and racialized community leaders as allies participated in life history interviews and focus groups to share how they came to aspire to allyship and build trust. Together, we synthesized three themes: (1) Starting points: white men’s early experiences that made them open to learning more about joining social justice groups; (2) Becoming a white male ally: a look at the processes through which some white men came to join social justice groups; and (3) Six relationships of white men’s allyship: the relationships that men practice allyship in. The series is meant as a resource for social justice groups to share with white men seeking allyship, and for white men seeking allyship to process and reflect on how they may show up in these spaces.

By Jeff Halvorsen, Lemlem Haile, Fanny Oliphant, and Liza Lorenzetti.

Acknowledgements to the community leaders who contributed to this work, Pamela Beebe, Lemlem Haile, Omer Jamal, Abbas Mancey, Fanny Oliphant, Kamal Sehgal, and Adrian Wolfleg, and to white men aspiring to allyship (Ryan, Will Tabak, Doug Murphy, Phil, Jerry, and Perry Stein.

Suggested Citation: Halvorsen, J., Haile, L., Oliphant, F., & Lorenzetti, L., (2023). White Men Learning to Ally: Infographic Series. University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.

Community Leaders Perspectives on White Men’s Allyship: Infographic Series

In a series of focus groups, seven community leaders including Black, Indigenous, and racialized people outlined their expectations of white men aspiring to allyship. Together, we synthesized these insights into three themes: (1) Resisting oppression: white men need to first understand that oppression is urgent, everywhere, and often invisible and taken-for-granted by white men; (2) Constructing white men: community leaders took the “power to define” and defined whiteness as a structural system, how white men are created by these systems, and the challenges this creates for white men aspiring to allyship; and (3) Expectations of white men seeking allyship to undo, learn & listen, commit, and act. The series is meant as a resource for social justice groups to share with white men seeking allyship, and for white men seeking allyship to process and reflect on how they may show up in these spaces.

Co-Authors: Jeff Halvorsen, Pam Beebe, Lemlem Haile, Omer Jamal, Fanny Oliphant, Abbas Mancey, Kamal Sehgal, Adrian Wolfleg, & Liza Lorenzetti.

Suggested Citation: Halvorsen, J., Beebe, P., Haile, L., Jamal, O., Oliphant, F., Mancey, A., Sehgal, K., Wolfleg, A., & Lorenzetti, L., (2023). Community Leaders Perspectives on White Men’s Allyship: Infographic Series. University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.

Latino Men’s Wellbeing Community Support Group

Alberta Men's Network is excited to release our new community report, LATINO MEN’S WELLBEING COMMUNITY SUPPORT GROUP. This report highlights the development of a community-focused well-being workshop series for Latino-Canadian men and shares key participant outcomes. Rooted in AMN’s anti-colonial, anti-racist and feminist lens, the workshop explored concepts of wellness, healthy relationships, gender equity, immigration, domestic violence, and racism. AMN would like to express our appreciation for the Authors: Sebastian Benavides, Fanny Oliphant, Veronica Chirino, Jeff Halvorsen, Tamara Humphrey, and Liza Lorenzetti. We would also like to highlight and thank our Organizing Team: Abbas Mancey, Herbert Campos, Marco Lopez, Adrian Wolfleg (AMN knowledge keeper),and Doug Murphy. We are thankful to our Organizational Partners: Alberta Network of Immigrant Women, Calgary Immigrant Women Association; and the University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work and Funder: The Calgary Foundation. 

Honouring Fathers & Daughters: A Bond Worth Celebrating

Alberta Men’s Network members see the critical need to find creative ways to engage men, their peers, and families to help build a society that is equitable, just, and free from oppression. Across cultures, men are discouraged from having close relationships with their daughters. Many men (fathers and father-figures) suppress these natural emotions about nurturing parental relationships as a result of societal expectations. These cultural norms and traditions perpetuate negative notions of masculinity and contribute to unhealthy relationships within families. Honouring Fathers and Daughters put a spotlight on the special relationship between fathers and daughters and acknowledge the importance of girl children in a global climate where often boys are still preferred and privileged (Allen & Daly, 2007; Nielsen, 2012).

AMN Healing Circle's

Healing Circles are a place, based on Indigenous philosophy, where people can safely share feelings, thoughts and concerns about their lives while receiving, and providing, support as they work through any difficulties they feel may be impeding their development, well-being, and life choices. Typically, participants attend regular, guided consecutive sessions that facilitate sharing: establishing boundaries, addictions, communications, family rules, control, loss, and closure. The number of sessions, and topics, may be increased should participants and the organizers choose to do so. The Healing Circle recognizes, and incorporates, Sharing Circle teachings and is a form of group support, not therapy. As offered, the sessions are more Support Circles. Participants are provided an opportunity to meet with support staff and/or Elders (on site) should there be a need, or wish, for deeper discussions and/or sharing.

AMN Foundational Training Community Report 2020

Building on AMN’s foundational experience in the field and working with community partners, AMN developed a Foundational Training to advance our work with men. The training was in direct response to requests by Network members and community partners for capacity development and support in facilitating men’s groups and community dialogues on topics such as: domestic and sexual violence prevention, men’s wellbeing, healthy masculinities, gender-equity; migration and racism, healing and anticolonial perspectives. The training offered by AMN builds knowledge and capacity in the following areas:

• AMN values, framework & mandate

• Gender-equity, human rights, anticolonialism and antiracism

• Indigenist philosophy around masculinity, personality, and being

• First Nations teachings, cultural knowledge and relevant history

• Violence prevention feminist participatory action research

• Sexual violence and prevention

• Introduction to working with men’s groups, with empathy and safety
  

Experiencing Masculinities Symposia Evaluation

Suggested citation:
Lorenzetti, L., Wright, A., Haile, L., Murphy, D., Shankar, J., Hoyt, M. & Sehgal, K. (2018). Experiencing masculinities symposia: Sharing perspectives on liberatory and healthy masculinities and violence prevention. Calgary, AB: Alberta Men’s Network/University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.

Experiencing Masculinities was hosted in both Calgary and Edmonton in June 2018 by the Alberta Men’s Network and the Faculty of Social Work (FSW) at the University of Calgary, in collaboration with Alberta Network of Immigrant Women, Men’s Action Network Calgary, Men Edmonton, the City of Edmonton, Action Dignity, The University of Calgary, Women’s Resource Centre and numerous community leaders.

Find out more by downloading the report.

Men as Agents of Change: An Antiracist and Anticolonial Lens

A growing body of literature suggests that gender inequality and violence work in tandem with other forms of oppression. In the area of gender inequality, rigid gender/sexuality stereotypes and expectations can have negative consequences for men and boys, as they do for women, girls, transgender and two-spirit peoples. This toolkit explains how AMN has approached this work through an intersectional lens to uncover strategies that engage organizations and communities to work against inequities in their various forms.

Download the toolkit to learn more.

Strategies for Planning and Running Men's Groups

AMN has participated in an ongoing dialogue with various organizations and groups providing healthy relationships support to men throughout Alberta. The information contained in this toolkit is based on what we have learned from these groups along with insights from the Alberta Men’s Survey. The “Strategies for Planning and Running Men’s Groups Toolkit” was created by healthy relationships advocates in Alberta as a user-friendly guide for agency stakeholders and community leaders. This toolkit is intended to provide specific information related to the planning and implementation of men’s groups; to empower you in your efforts to assist men and ‘walk alongside’ them in their efforts to build and maintain positive and healthy relationships. More specifically, these strategies will help you increase attendance while enhancing the positive benefits that men derive from your program.

This toolkit is part of a multi-part series on working with men and boys.

Part I: Planning Your Group

This toolkit goes over important considerations for planning your group and barriers to getting help that sometimes need to be overcome in order to enable participation.

Download the toolkit to learn more.

Part II: Running Your Group

This toolkit provides suggestions and considerations for choosing topics and activities, as well as running and maintaining your group.

Download the toolkit to learn more.

Interactive Online Toolkit

This modular online version of the toolkit provides another more interactive way of approaching the Strategies for Planning and Running Men’s Groups toolkit for those not keen on PDFs or who do not need to print the material.

Conversations About Masculinities: Interactive Toolkit for Service Providers

This is a guide for community conversation about masculinities. The purpose of this guide is to help agencies and service providers invite community members into a dialogue about masculinities. Beyond encouraging men to make connections and share their diverse views and definitions of “masculinities”, this Guide seeks to encourage people to challenge and expand status-quo masculinity with the goal of creating healthy people and communities.

Download the toolkit to find out more.

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Conversations About Masculinities: Interactive Online Toolkit

Desktop viewing is recommended.

Consensus Decision Making: A Guide to Men's Organizing Work

Men’s Action Network Calgary (MAN-C) developed this consensus decision-making protocol through our organizing work with men on healthy relationships and violence prevention. The Protocol is based on western social justice activism, Baha’i teachings and Indigenous-centered teachings. A few members created the Protocol and shared with members of MAN-C and later, Alberta Men’s Network for feedback and endorsement. We hope that this will be a useful resource for anyone involved in social justice organizing.

Consensus is often dismissed as being a time-consuming process, but in actuality it is faster, more efficient, and more reliable than the traditional methods of decision-making. Consensus compels the group to ‘out’ their concerns and disagreements from the onset, instead of harboring them or ‘beating around the bush’. Although a meeting that uses the consensus method may be longer than one where a majority vote is utilized, the non-consensus formats oftentimes do not create group ‘buy in’ on decisions. This kind of commitment by the group is often an essential element of the outcome and follow-through. Also, if there are group members who were voted down or remained silent about their disagreement with the decision, these issues will often pop up later in the process when the decision is being implemented.

Download the toolkit to learn more.

Healthy Family Relations: A Community Response to Domestic Violence

Binu Sebastian, MSW, RSW & Liza Lorenzetti, PhD (c), RSW

This handbook provides a quick overview of the building blocks to develop healthy and non-violent relationships and communities. It also gives community members some tools that they can use to become involved in violence prevention within their homes, communities, schools, faith communities and other places where they gather.

Download the handbook to learn more.

This handbook would not have come together without the help, support, and hard work of many people. We are grateful to North of McKnight community members and the North of McKnight Resident’s Committee in Calgary, Alberta for their generosity in sharing community knowledge and experiences. Special thanks to community organizers Atiya Ashna, Lalita Singh and Diane Altwasser for their support and collaboration during creation of this handbook. Many thanks to Anna Zakharova for handbook layout and finalization and Arya Boustani for the cover photo.

The Alberta Men's Survey: A Conversation with Men about Well-being and Healthy Relationships

Suggested citation:
Lorenzetti, L., Lantion, V., Murwisi, P., Hoyt, M., Oliphant, F., Sadhwani, H., Oshchepkova, T., & Este, D. (2016). The Alberta Men’s Survey: A conversation with men about healthy relationships. Alberta Men’s Network, Calgary, Alberta.

Alberta Men’s Survey [AMS] was one of the milestones in a shared journey of Albertans from various backgrounds, nations and experiences; a journey towards healthy relationships free of gender based violence. The AMS was never meant to be a one-off academic exercise. This collective voyage began when a group of men and women1 allies realized that answers to everincreasing violence against women had to be found within the dominant beliefs, cultural practices and ideologies that inform and influence men themselves. The daily practices of masculinity, gender norms (rigid gender identity) and other forms of isolating or oppressive realities were considered. In addition, men’s often unacknowledged quest for well-being and personal healing emerged as having a central role in preventing violence in the next generations. In that spirit, the journey of this group, now identifying as Alberta Men’s Network [AMN], was inward looking as a first step toward becoming transformational.

Download the report to find out more.

The research project was made possible by the collective effort of the Alberta Men’s Survey Leadership Team composed of representatives from Alberta Father Involvement Initiative, Alberta Human Rights Commission, Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services, Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association (CIWA), Calgary Sexual Health Centre, City of Edmonton, Community Members, Edmonton/Evergreen Family Violence Committee, Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary (ECCC), MEN Edmonton (ME), Men’s Action Network Calgary (MANC), Norwood Family Center, REACH, The Calgary Foundation, United Way of Calgary and Area, and University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work, in collaboration with various community organizations and other service providers in Alberta. The project also received tremendous support from many individuals and organizations that contributed in different capacities at various phases of the initiative.

Project Funders / Supporters: Alberta Human Rights Commission, City of Edmonton, Alberta Father Involvement Initiative (AFII), Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary, The Calgary Foundation, United Way of Calgary and Area, and University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work.

Well-Being and Healthy Relationships Insights and Experiences of South Asian Men in Alberta

Suggested citation:
Nath, M., Sadhwani, H., Lorenzetti, L. (2018). Well-Being and Healthy Relationships: Insights and Experiences of South Asian Men in Alberta. Alberta Men’s Network. www.albertamen.com

Canada is an immigrant receiving country with a high level of ethnocultural diversity. Almost seven million Canadians were born outside the country (Statistics Canada, 2011). While immigrant communities are key contributors to Canadian identity and prosperity, South Asians, like other migrants, may experience numerous resettlement challenges resulting in stress and frustration, isolation, anxiety, and depression; in some cases, mental health concerns, interpersonal conflict and domestic violence are present (Ferzana & Archana, 2017; Robert, & Gilkinson, 2012). There is little research, however, on the well-being of South Asian men who have resettled in Canada, which limits services, supports and policies that are inclusive of this group. To explore and understand the capacities and resources required by a diverse population of men, this research brief focuses on the insights and experiences of 89 immigrant male Albertans of South Asian descent.

Download the research brief to learn more.

This report would not be possible without the support of The Alberta Human Rights Education and Multiculturalism Fund, the University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work, and the Alberta Network of Immigrant Women.

Well-Being and Healthy Relationships: Insights and Experiences of Latino Men in Alberta

Suggested citation:
Oliphant, F., Sadhwani, H., Lorenzetti, L., Villegas, G., Otteson, J. & Valley, R. (2018). Well-Being and Healthy Relationships: Insights and Experiences of Latino Men in Alberta. Hombres Latinos en Alberta: Bienestar Emocional y Relaciones Interpersonales Saludables. Alberta Men’s Network. www.albertamen.com

The Alberta Men’s Survey (AMS) gathered responses on men’s well-being and relationships from over 2,214 men in 42 unique localities. This research brief focuses on the insights and experiences of 132 Latino men living in Alberta, representing 6% of the total AMS respondents.

Download the research brief to learn more.

This report would not be possible without the support of The Alberta Human Rights Education and Multiculturalism Fund, the University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work, Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary, United Way of Calgary and Area, Calgary Foundation, and Alberta Network of Immigrant Women.