Boys to Men, a community-based mentoring program providing boys with positive male role models, is holding its 25th-anniversary celebration on April 25 at the Catamaran Resort in Pacific Beach.<\/p>\n
Titled \u201cRooted in Resiliency,\u201d the anniversary at the resort\u2019s hotel at 3999 Mission Blvd. will feature a private concert with Grammy Award-winning artist Jason Mraz, joined by Gregory Page, Gregg Gerson, and Carlos Olmeda.<\/p>\n
Boys to Men Mentoring Workshop was founded in 1996 by Joe Sigurdson and Craig McClain. The organization encourages boys, many without a father, to become the man they want to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be an exquisite evening at the Catamaran on the lawn overlooking the bay,\u201d noted Sigurdson. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be very elegant: beach formal. We will have a sit-down dinner with carving stations and a hosted bar. Later, we will move upstairs to the Kon Tiki Room where we will present our inaugural Community Hero Award to Shaun Tomson.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tomson is a South African professional surfer, environmentalist, actor, author, and businessman. He has been listed among the top 10 surfers of the century and was the 1977 World Surfing Champion. \u201cHe\u2019s renowned for writing four books and is one of the most highly sought-after keynote speakers,\u201d said Sigurdson. \u201cHe\u2019s an inspiring guy for sure and a founding member of the Surfrider Foundation. He\u2019s been Boys to Men\u2019s spokesperson for our 100 Wave Challenge, our largest annual fundraiser. With his notoriety and his validation, that has put us at another level.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Surfrider Foundation USA is a grassroots nonprofit environmental organization that works to protect and preserve the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches.<\/p>\n
Sigurdson said some of the core values of Boys to Men come from the model provided by Alcoholics Anonymous, which he noted provides a \u201csuper powerful, transformational, and introspective framework, a rite of passage for a boy’s transition into manhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boys to Men\u2019s founder said the organization employs a \u201cshared experience\u201d between boys and men. Of how the program started, Sigurdson said, \u201cWe thought, \u2018Let\u2019s do this demographically, inside a school. We started our first in-school mentoring program in 2008. By 2020, we were in 36 schools running 60 groups a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boys to Men Mentoring\u2019s mission is to build communities of male role models who, through consistent group mentoring, encourage and empower teenage boys to follow their dreams. Middle and high school teenage boys were chosen by Boys to Men because that age is a critical time when a boy\u2019s choices begin to form the foundation of the man he will become. No boy dreams of dropping out of school, going to prison, getting hooked on drugs, or joining a gang \u2013 but many do.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur mentors go into schools and sit down in circles with young men that are struggling,\u201d noted Sigurdson. \u201cThe men share their stories, what\u2019s happened to us, how we feel about the decisions we made, and the price we paid for some of those choices. Then we talk about what we wished we\u2019d done differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Sigurdson: \u201cOur job is to challenge them (boys), ask them what they want to be, and then listen. After they tell us, we ask them what they would be willing to do differently to move toward getting that. When the boys make a new choice, our job is then to give them other choices that they can look at. Later, we do accountability where we check in with those guys and see if they\u2019re doing what they said they were going to do to be the men they said they wanted to be. This is a long-term solution, a process of transformation and change.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Boys to Men, a community-based mentoring program providing boys with positive male role models, is holding its 25th-anniversary celebration on April 25 at the Catamaran Resort in Pacific Beach. Titled \u201cRooted in Resiliency,\u201d the anniversary at the resort\u2019s hotel at 3999 Mission Blvd. will feature a private concert with Grammy Award-winning artist Jason Mraz, joined […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":840,"featured_media":322761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Boys to Men, a community-based mentoring program providing boys with positive male role models, is holding its 25th-anniversary celebration on April 25 at the Catamaran Resort in Pacific Beach.","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"3","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"1","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"1","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[15405,15406,15493],"tags":[14130,15777,13549,15776,12543,14132,13493],"class_list":["post-322758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press-features","category-beach-bay-press-news","category-sdnews-features","tag-100-wave-challenge","tag-boys-to-men","tag-catamaran-resort","tag-jason-mraz","tag-pacific-beach","tag-shaun-tomson","tag-surfrider-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322762,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322758\/revisions\/322762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}