Welcome to Boys to Men LA

This is the News Blog of the Boys To Men Mentoring public website for the Los Angeles Metro area including Orange County. Take a look at the Boys to Men Website, and watch some of the impactful, powerful videos, and then consider joining with us.

Hawaii Boys to Men Article

Hawaii is a new and booming program
Amazing Article

http://northhawaiinews.com/sections/news/transforming-boys-men.html

May 10th Meeting in Culver City, 10am to Noon

The next Boys to Men Los Angeles meeting will be at Zat Elias' house from 10 am to 12 Noon, Saturday May 10th



Zat's address is: MAP LINK
3323 Caroline Avenue, Culver City, CA 90232
Nathan Rogers-Madsen will be leading this meeting. Christopher is scheduled to work during that time.

•  • Videoconference 
•  • Incorporation 
•  • Journeymen Documentary 

Joe Sigurdson plans to videoconference with us and we will likely have another man from Boys to Men San Diego also videoconference with us. Nathan will also have information about the process of incorporation. He has a set of bylaws and it is time to begin the process of forming a board of directors. 

Christopher suggests that we take the last 30-60 minutes to watch either the full version or the short version of the Journeyman documentary. Nathan owns a copy that Christopher will arrange to have at the meeting. Christopher watched the full version earlier and it was very good. 

BtMLA Zat Elias' house, 10:00 am to 12:00, Saturday, May 10, 2014

Report from Our First Meeting

Ten men attended our first meeting. After checking in and a short overview, we went over questions we have about Boys to Men. These will be forwarded to Mike Bonahan, who is guiding us through this process. Mike is currently the head of Boys to Men in Hawai'i. I will share his answers when I get them.

Two Goals

Our two main goals right now are to determine how we will get our mentors trained (required before we work with boys) and how we will get incorporated. We currently have a Google Docs folder that we have been using for various organizational purposes. The link is here:

RESPONSIBILITIES 

We also began splitting up responsibilities. The men who signed up for these responsibilities are not taking the whole thing on their shoulders. They are the beginnings of larger teams who will handle each of these responsibilities together. If you want to be join one of these teams, please say so! -

• Incorporation - Nate Rogers 
• Administration/Finance - Rick Borelli 
• Secretary/Communication - Christopher O'Dell 
• Boys Outreach 
• Mentor Recruitment - Zat Elias, Steve Matthews 
• Mentor Training - Darshan, Zat Elias 

I chose these responsibilities to focus on first from a list of the responsibilities fulfilled by the board members of Boys to Men Hawaii provided to me by Mike Bonahan, as well as my own judgment (BTM Hawaii is is already incorporated and so doesn't need an incorporation team - we do).

The full list of responsibilities he gave me are as follows:

• Mentor Coordinators 
• Administration & Finance Coordinators 
• Mentor Training Coordinators Outreach Coordinators 
• Rite of Passage Adventure Weekend (the BTM analog to the NWTA) 
• Coordinators J-Group (the BTM analog to I-Groups) Coordinators 

As well as the standard positions of a non-profit:

• President
• Vice President
• Secretary 
• Treasurer 

So far as I understand it, we can choose to split our responsibilities up differently if we so choose, adding responsibilities or splitting teams and responsibilities up as makes sense to us. The important thing is that we have already begun taking on these responsibilities.

NEXT MEETING 

We are planning for our next meeting to be in early or late May, at Zat Elias' house in Culver City. We are hoping to have one or two men from established Boys to Men centers join us virtually, though we haven't contacted them about this yet. -Christopher O'Dell

Sunday April 13th, Long Beach - First Meeting

Our first meeting will be in Long Beach

DATE
Sunday April 13th, Long Beach - 3pm to 5pm.

LOCATION
5568 East Park Crest Street, Long Beach, CA 90808
Google Map Link

WHAT
We will be introducing ourselves, building connections, and thinking about what needs to be done and our future timeline.

Meeting in the Park in front of this house