By Mary O’KEEFE

On Tuesday Governor Gavin Newsom announced the California Men’s Service Challenge. This new initiative is made through a statewide executive order to address disconnection in young men and boys. It encourages and helps men step up and serve their community through the California Service Corps and volunteer and service opportunities with partner organizations. 

“As a father of three boys, I’m deeply grateful to Gov. Newsom for signing an executive order to support our young men and our boys, a comprehensive effort in the state of California to provide purpose and meaning and connection and responsibility and community. This is a much-needed statewide effort at a time when suicide rates among young men are growing,” said Josh Fryday during a press conference on Tuesday. Fryday is a member of the Newsom’s cabinet who is the GO-Serve director and California chief service officer. Fryday also serves with the California Governor’s Council for Career Education. 

“Young men are three times as likely to die by suicide than young women. Also this is a time when college rates of young men are going down and a time when California men are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to volunteer in their community. [It is more] likely that for every one young man who steps up to serve – to be part of Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, the California Service Corps – there are two women who step up for these very same programs,” he said. 

He added there are organizations that focus on helping and supporting boys/men.

“[These organizations help] boys who need a mentor, boys who need role models, boys in need of love and to be seen … and they don’t have it. Today we take an important step to fix this,” he said. 

The California Men’s Service Challenge is calling on 10,000 young members throughout the state to step up and serve their community, to be mentors, tutors, sports coaches and leaders every single day, Fryday added. 

“We are going to be sending a very clear and a very powerful message to our young men: We need you and have created paid service opportunities through the California Service Corps and volunteer opportunities with our partners, whether you have a weekend or a year to give,” he said. 

Newsom said the initiative is to address the feeling that many boys and men have that they are not being heard. 

“They don’t feel heard. They feel increasingly isolated, they feel increasingly alone. We have an epidemic of loneliness and so much of that is manifesting and metastasizing online in a very profound and consequential way,” Newsom said during the press conference. “We have a crisis in this country of men and boys and for decades, candidly, we’ve neglected it because some of us have been scared to enter the fray, because somehow we felt it was a zero-sum game, that somehow if we’re focusing on the needs of men and boys, somehow we’re taking away from our advocacy around gender equality, taking our advocacy away from women and girls. So you can understand in many ways that tension, but it’s not a zero-sum game. And this crisis has become a crisis not just for men and boys, but for women and girls as well.”

To find out how to help or to join the California Men’s Service Challenge visit www.californiavolunteers.ca.gov/mens-service-challenge/.