Educating young people about violence against females and giving them the tools to prevent it is the goal of the Man Up Campaign that founder Jimmie Briggs spoke to students about at NVC on March 7.
The former journalist, now turned a respected human rights activist and author, shared his message with students as part of the NVC Peace & Conflict and NVC Diversity speaker series. Briggs left a busy journalism career to start his nonprofit organization in 2010 after doing many stories on atrocities to children and females in African and other countries. Many of the victims were often females, who were used as child soldiers and sexually abused.
The Man Up Campaign’s mission, according to its Facebook page, is to end gender-based violence and advance gender equality through programming and support of youth-led initiatives intended to transform communities, nations and the world. Man Up has given grants to teens to start social media sites, websites and local nonviolence chapters. Even a teen girls group in Brazil organized and uses graffiti to educate its community
“The goal is for young people to come up with solutions that are culturally relevant to them and speak to them about these issues and how to change behaviors,” Briggs told students in Pam Dunagan’s Government class.
Briggs said while the focus of his organization has been in other countries, he now wants to emphasize educating U.S. boys in order to change behaviors at an early age. He said this means holistically working with churches, schools, parents and even children’s TV shows to teach boys to respect women.
Briggs said it’s not enough as a man just to say, “that’s not me” when we are allowing others to create the violence.
Carlos Lopez, coordinator of NVC’s Peace & Conflict Studies program, emphasized to students to not be a bystander, but do something about it.
“Whether it’s in San Antonio or in Uganda, we are all interconnected and it affects us whether it’s bullying out in the hallways or domestic abuse.”
To learn more about the Man Up Campaign, go to its Facebook link.