Checking In with Young Men: The Man Cave’s Insights and Impact Report

The Man Cave recently released a report that is a fantastic example of how to check in with young men.

The Man Cave recently released their Insights and Impact Report from 2021.

The report shares stories and data from young men (12-16 years old), teachers, and The Man Cave’s facilitators to paint a picture of what’s really going on in the minds and lives of young men.

As part of The Man Cave’s online programs, young men across Victoria completed an iyarn check in to show the current reality of how they’re honestly feeling about their lives right now.

The Man Cave’s Work with Young Men

The Man Cave recently released their Insights and Impact Report from 2021.

The report shares stories and data from young men (12-16 years old), teachers, and The Man Cave’s facilitators to paint a picture of what’s really going on in the minds and lives of young men.

The Man Cave are an Australian-based preventative mental health and emotional intelligence charity that empowers communities to raise generations of healthy young men.

They run transformational masculinities programs for hundreds of young men every week, and see inside their unfiltered internal worlds in each and every program.

Having worked with nearly 21,000 boys, they understand that when boys are given the language, permission, space, and role modelling to engage with each other in a safe environment, they open up and begin to express themselves and their authentic worldview.

The Study

The goal of the report is to amplify the voice of young men and bridge the disconnect between their experience and the world around them. Written in partnership with Dr Katie Wood (Associate Professor and Clinical Psychologist from Swinburne University), they explored the key topic of male friendships.

They surveyed both young men and teachers from a range of Independent, Private, Government Catholic schools in Victoria, Australia. They also spoke with their own facilitators about what they saw in their own programs.

iyarn for Checking In with Young Men During the Online Programs

Despite the lockdowns in Victoria, The Man Cave were still able to work with over 700 boys in the last 3 months through face-to-face and online programs, which increased their direct impact for the year to 3,700 boys across 50+ schools in Victoria.

iyarn was used as part of their online programs which were designed to specifically meet the needs of boys during lockdown, providing boys with the space, permission, tools, and role models to connect with each other.

The online programs were 2 hour sessions on Zoom and provided the chance to check in on their wellbeing and learn to support each other.

The Segments

To get a well-rounded view of how young men were feeling about their lives during Victoria’s 6th lockdown, they completed an iyarn check in wheel shown below:

The Results From Their iyarn Check In Wheel

Checking in with iyarn provided crucial data to understand the current wins and challenges of young men in the online program.

The areas where the group was feeling strongest is “physical health” and “family and home”, while the weaker areas were “school” and “friends and relationships”.

From the qualitative comments reported amongst the groups:

The Wins:

• Enjoying their lives at home with their families, despite lockdowns
• Looking after themselves and forming healthy habits, especially around their diet, exercise and sleep
• Feeling optimistic about their future

The Challenges:

• Struggling with school and the long-hours of online learning
• Missing quality time with their friends
• Struggling with their self-esteem and confidence, mostly related to the monotony of lockdowns

Find Out More from the Insight and Impact Report

Given that “friends and relationships” was one of the lower scores, The Insight and Impact Report goes into much more detail about how young men feel about their friendships and their future. Check out the full report results over at our longer article. It’s a fascinating read.

Want to Check In with Your Own Group?

iyarn is a powerful tool for data visualisation and insights. If you’d like to see how iyarn can work with your group, reach out to us at hello@iyarn.com.au and arrange a demo.