Genesis House is a place where women and children who are victims of domestic violence have gone to find safety and support, it is now the umbrella organization for the Men's Family Violence Intervention Program (MFVIP).
The MenTOR program was developed in B.C. and according to the MenTOR website it, "began in 2012 as a shared project, MenTOR has developed and grown over the years. Many professional sources as well as those with lived experience have contributed to the content of the group curriculum. The program participated in a province-wide network project through the Ministry of Justice from 2016-2018 and was positively evaluated by Simon Fraser University."
MFVIP Coordinator George Nickel took the training to facilitate the program in Manitoba. It is the first one to run here.
He shared about the new 17-week program starting up this week.
"The MenTOR program is designed to help men who feel stuck in their relationships, and so this could include domestic violence as well. This is a program that's designed to address some of the underlying issues that men have in trying to relate to their partners. It's just that frustration that happens, on both sides, for the women and for the men, and they cannot seem to communicate, and so the relationship breaks down. If there's children in the relationship, they're the ones that end up really suffering the most."
Nickel outlines the goal of the program and how it is run.
"An interactive program where men relate their stories and they hear from each other the situations and the relationships they're in. They're able to, at the very least, they stop feeling alone in their situation and they start to recognize, they're not the only one going through this stuff. And that, in itself, is a very helpful concept for most men to realize, 'OK. I'm not the only one dealing with this stuff.'"
The MenTOR Program and the Caring Dads Program are both running this fall and winter.
Nickel noted the problems men are dealing with are not new, these programs help them recognize the behavior and to give them tools and hope for the future.
"My heart breaks for the men. I know they feel sometimes a little bit helpless; they feel a little bit like they don't know how to get past all the barriers that seem to be put in place. Especially if CFS or the justice system is involved in any way, the barriers just seem to be insurmountable. They feel they have no options, and so these programs are very much geared to give them options, and to give them hope, and to give them tools to start the process of improving their relationship. It plays such a huge, vital piece."
Nickel encourages any man wanting to try out the program to do so, without feeling obligated to continue. He can't stress enough the importance of a positive relationship between fathers and their children.
"The impact is so much greater because the children are involved, the next generation. Then we see that over and over again within the shelter, that as the women come in, they have children and very often we see the children come in as well. So, it's a generational thing and we're just trying to intervene and to put some hope in between so that the next generation doesn't have to do the same thing. It's a very important piece and it needs much more attention than it's currently getting."
More information about the Men's Family Violence Intervention Program MenTOR is on the community events calendar.