GMADA: Approach

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GMADA’S APPROACH
Getting the right men together.
The kind of change we are experiencing in Gloucester, and envisioning in other places, depends on men who are not social or political activists. Activists have a role to play in starting this work, but the male culture won’t change if only activists are involved.
We have found that, for one reason or another, plenty of “regular guys” already know a lot about the costs of domestic abuse. Getting these guys involved has been easier than you might think. Men from all kinds of backgrounds have told us they are relieved to have a chance to help.

We respect men, and when we ask them to help out, respect makes all the difference. We offer simple ways to take action; most of us are not interested in committee work or meeting to discuss masculinity issues. In Gloucester, we started by asking “Will you join a lot of us in ending our silence about domestic abuse? We are planning to…….”
Many deeper conversations come later. When we carry GMADA’s messages in our attitudes-- or stickered to the back of ours cars or trucks—or printed on our t-shirts --conversations occur wherever we go. In this way we are talking about the change and doing the change at the same time
.
We have never tried to maximize the number of men involved—it would be easy to get lots more men to sign on. Instead we decided to make sure all kinds of men in our city would stand with us. We realized it was important for men to be represented in proportion to their numbers in the city. For example, in a largely blue collar community you might have three or four blue collar men and 85 white collar men, but the impact would be bigger with 40 or 50 blue collar men. In Gloucester, we never put out a general invitation, which would have brought mostly activists and few others. Instead, we talked with each other one at a time until we had men from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences involved (see FAQs). By the time of the billboard event, in our fourth year, our group represented the entire male community of Gloucester.Men and women working together.

Our hope is that the GMADA model will spread around the country mainly by way of battered women’s agencies, rape crisis centers and domestic violence roundtables. We men need to rely on the experience and wisdom local women’s agencies have gathered over the past 25 years. There is also a great deal of healing for both men and women that can come from doing this work together.
The following questions might be of use to women working in these agencies:
Are a broad range of men in your community actively and publicly supporting your work and/or opposing male violence against women?

Can you imagine yourself or someone from your agency meeting with men like those in our video on a regular basis to develop a way for men in your own community to end their silence? The leadership of HAWC met with men twice monthly for more than a
year, and then monthly. But, now that there is a model of how this can work, the startup time might be much shorter. We recommend, however, not underestimating the importance of building working relationships --the collaboration should be valued in itself if trust is to grow and healing is to occur in our communities.

Can any of your staff imagine asking a few men you know from outside the social service professions—such as carpenters, plumbers, and auto mechanics—to sit down and watch this 11-minute video? Would it be possible to ask these men to join with you in getting larger numbers of men to speak out? If not, do you know men you could show it to who might be likely bridges to a broader group of men?

Several women’s agencies have already called local men together, shown them our video and background articles, and made a commitment to figure out strategies for their own communities. If you would like to talk with a woman who has been connected with this work, please contact HAWC, Nicole Richon Schoel, Director of Community Outreach, email: nicolers@helpabusedwomen.org.
For men who want to take action, we suggest that after you go over our website, you look at www.menscampaign.org. The next step could be to identify your local women’s service agency, and offer them our materials and try to arrange a meeting.