Y Monthly Monday Mission Update
Helping Young Men Thrive
If you have been paying attention to our cultural and social trends of late, you likely know that boys and young men are struggling in the United States. Since 2010, suicide rates among young men have risen by a third; they are now higher than they are among middle-aged men. The share of college degrees going to men has fallen to 41 percent, lower than women’s share in 1970. One in 10 men aged 20 to 24 is neither enrolled in school nor working. That is twice the rate than in 1990. Young men are the demographic group most responsible for committing the constant and devastating occurrences of mass shootings we see across our country.
As the authors and social scientists Robert Putnam and Richard Reeves wrote in a recent piece in The New York Times, “this male malaise is not just about jobs and diplomas. It is also a crisis of connection, as men and boys are increasingly detached from civic, familial and social life. They are lost, in part, because they are lonely: 25 percent of boys and men aged 15 to 34 told Gallup they had experienced loneliness ‘a lot’ on the previous day. One in seven young men reports that he has no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. Two thirds of men under the age of 30 think that ‘no one cares if men are okay.’”
I think that it is obvious that you cannot have a functioning society when boys and young men are struggling this mightily. While no one institution or strategy is going to change this trajectory, the Y is stepping forward at scale to have a materially positive impact on boys and young men here in central Maryland and across the country.
Recently we took a group of 15 highly accomplished adult men who care a great deal about this issue on a tour of some of what we call our “Young Men Thriving” work in Baltimore City. From learning about our multitude of programming at the Druid Hill Y, to spending time at Y Community School Mergenthaler Vocational High School (MERVO), to visiting the Weinberg Y to learn about our partnership with Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, we shared ways that our programs focus on college and career readiness and support young men and their families in underserved communities.
In Baltimore City, our unique asset in serving boys and young men is our extensive school-based footprint and partnerships. We are in 29 schools across the city, and of the over 14,000 children and youth we serve in those schools, almost 4,000 of those are boys ages 11 to 17. Being embedded in schools allows us to build deep relationships, facilitate learning, foster personal growth, and promote career exploration. Homegrown leaders throughout our organization make the rich depth and high quality of our work possible.
As the father of a son who had many highs and lows as he traversed his teens and early 20s, and is now a wonderfully grounded and productive 29 year-old, I have had a front-row view of the complexity and challenges facing our boys and young men. As the leader of a Y in a unique position to bend the curve for them in a positive direction, this is deeply personal to me. It is deeply personal to the many great leaders here at the Y engaged in this work across the plethora of programs and sites at which we operate. None of us intends to waste a moment. We will show up for boys and for girls all over Baltimore and this region every single day and we need as many partners in this work as possible.
All the best,
John K. Hoey
President & CEO
The Y in Central Maryland