Growing up as a man is complicated. Boys to Men Tucson, an organization based out of the Historic Y just north of Downtown, is trying to make it a little easier by lighting the way. Boys to Men Tucson provides circles for boys and masculine-identified youth to explore their relationship to masculinity under the guidance of a mentor.

Boys to Men will have circles in 19 area middle schools and high schools for the upcoming school year. The circles usually each include 10-15 students, with two volunteer mentors. In the circles, students are able to share with mentors, who guide them in unpacking traditional ideas of what it means to be a man.

“What we boil it down to is really unlearning toxic behaviors and rediscovering what masculinity is on an authentic level for individuals,” said Paul Braden, operations manager of the group. “The literal definition of masculinity is characteristics or traits that we assign men or male people in a society. So masculinity is really whatever you deem it.”

For Braden, who is queer and non-binary, men have rarely been safe for them in society, they said. But being able to be part of the work to help make men safer, Braden says, is “a beautiful way to live.”

“We’re not here to fix them, rescue them, or project onto them. That’s not our role. It’s simply to hold space with these youth, to help support them and see them for who they really are and cherish their authenticity,” Braden said.

Vida Rodriguez has been involved with Boys to Men for several years, first as a student and now as a mentor.

The first time he tried to join a circle at his middle school, Rodriguez was turned away. Rodriguez, who is transgender, said he was kept out of the meetings due to the interference of his mother, who insisted to his school that he was legally female.

By the time Rodriguez was in high school, he had medically transitioned and was allowed into the Boys to Men circle at his school.

“They were like, well, that should not have happened,” Rodriguez said. “If you identify as masculine, you don’t have to be medically transitioned. You can be wearing a dress and say that you identify as masculine, and we’ll let you join.”

Rodriguez, now 18 and a youth peer outreach specialist at Goodwill, said he fights for female-presenting students to be allowed into the male spaces where he works, because without a group like Boys to Men, Rodriguez says, he wouldn’t be where he is.

“They really helped me out of a dark place,” he said. “And it really guided me to the direction that I want to go with my life, to provide the same support that I never received when I was in school.”

Rodriguez says his mentor, former Boys to Men Tucson program manager Tayamni Goodshield, was one of the first adults in his life to listen to him without judgment.

“He listened, and he didn’t give the kind of response that any other adult would,” Rodriguez said. “He just kind of looked at me and was like, alright, you went through all of this, but you’re still going to go far and you’re still going to do this, and you’re still important.”

Rodriguez, who grew up with a single mother, says Boys to Men taught him about the many ways to be a man in the midst of his transition. The program helped him unlearn his own deep-rooted beliefs about masculinity — to be strong, not to cry, and not to be vulnerable.

“I did believe stuff like that deeply, especially being transgender. I wanted to conform. I needed to be the most passing cisgender guy in the world so that nobody will suspect anything and attack me, attack my identity,” Rodriguez said.

Now, Rodriguez is a mentor with the group, returning often to the same schools he attended when he was young. He gets to see a lot of himself in the boys that he mentors, he says.

“Even if I get to see that kid maybe once a week, or I just saw him once and I never got to see him again, I know that at least I’m planting seeds everywhere that I go,” he said. “And I know that they’re going to keep being watered.”

Though Boys to Men Tucson is open to all, the majority of the students involved in the program are youth of color, Braden said. Boys to Men Tucson targets Title I Schools, which includes most of the schools in the Tucson Unified School District.

“We end up having maybe 10 to 15 kids every year who go through the group, and watching them grow and get some support has been really powerful. It really does make a difference, things like this,” said Craig Wunderlich, a longtime mentor with the group at Cholla High School.

Wunderlich attended a mentor training at the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona last Saturday, Aug. 17, along with first-time mentor David Yrigoyen, who said the only groups like this available to him when he was growing up in Tucson were through church.

“It’s great to have an open, safe space for people to communicate and tap into some trauma that they may be holding onto, and allow them to release it and have a healthy way of healing through it, rather than turning to alcohol, drugs or violence,” Yrigoyen said.

The organization, which has chapters across the country, also has a program for boys and is working on establishing a similar program for girls at the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center.

“I think it’s really, really important for them to have a decent time when they’re in such indecent conditions,” said Boys to Men Tucson fund development manager Mark McKenna.

McKenna started working with the group after a workplace accident left him with a broken back and forced him to confront his own notions of masculinity.

“It was the first time I found a stillness where I couldn’t keep myself busy,” he said. “I couldn’t provide or do what I needed to do for others the way it was modeled for me.”

Growing up in a Mexican-American household, McKenna says, the machismo culture was “very, very present” and “very, very intense.”

McKenna is familiar with the statistics of violent crime perpetrated by men. At a mentor training, he and Braden read them off of a slideshow to prospective mentors — ninety percent of homicides in the U.S. are committed by men, and 80 percent of suicides.

At Boys to Men, the question for McKenna is what to do about it.

“Every one of those men who’ve committed violent acts was a youth at one point,” McKenna said. “Every violent man at some point was a youth that didn’t have love.”

Boys to Men Tucson hosts drop-in community circles open to all masculine-identified youth every Wednesday at their headquarters, 738 N. 5th Ave., and at Goodwill, 2990 W. Ina Rd. The organization holds mentor trainings throughout the year.