The Northern California Heartbeat is a place for men to tell their stories,
share their works & their experiences, and keep the community up-to-date.
— In this Issue —
- NorCal Men In Mission
- ManKind Project USA Membership Fall Campaign Happening Now
- A-Group or I-Group?
- Waves of Work (WoW) Group Looking For a Few Men!
- Final NorCal Race & Racism Call of 2020
Submit your article & story ideas!
NorCal Men In Mission
Daron Scarborough
Christian Pedersen
In the months leading up to the election, two MKP men in the Grass Valley area took it upon themselves to get involved with encouraging folks to vote. Christian Pedersen and Daron Scarborough teamed up this Fall to be Election Defenders. As Elections Defenders, they were part of a nationwide effort of people taking action to defend the integrity of democracy in the recent presidential election. While attending weekly trainings for 8 weeks leading up to the election, they recruited team members and organized local and online events for our areas. These events included: phone banking, texting, and letter writing to encourage people to register and vote; poll monitoring; ballot curing efforts for rejected ballots; and encouraging donations to local and national organizations working at preserving democracy.
This election has been a trying time for so many. It is our hope all the divisions in our families, communities, country, and world as a result of the political climate of late, will resolve and we can become more United in every way.
We salute these men for showing up in their community!
ManKind Project USA Membership Fall Campaign Happening Now
MKP is more than a weekend, an I-Group, an Area, or a Society. We’ve proven this in a powerful way this year. Even in this difficult time, the ManKind Project USA is doing more! We’ve expanded our offerings through a new curriculum for men at any stage in their journey. We’ve rolled out new men’s groups and new ways to connect in the community, and much more. And this is thanks to men like us, supporting the work.
Your support makes the difference between failure and success.
“Our vision is a safe world where all men are brothers, in relationship with one another … A world where conflicts are resolved peacefully; where torture, genocide, domestic violence, and senseless war are only entries in history books …
Where men are fully accountable and take responsibility for their decisions …
Where men stand tall and proud to be men, secure in their role and deeply committed to nurturing one another, their families, their communities, and their planet.”
~ ManKind Project Vision Statement
It’s about men with values. Men who embody Accountability, Authenticity, Compassion, Generosity, Integrity, Intercultural Competency, Leadership, and Respect.
It’s about role models and action. We empower men to lives of mission for the sake of humanity and a safer world.
Support the cause – help co-create the new reality – Take Action! Join MKP Today!
A-Group or I-Group?
Zoom call blues – you’ve got ’em, I’ve got ’em, we’ve all got ’em.
One I-Group in San Francisco decided to fight Zoom blues by taking a risk on an entirely new format: “A-Groups.” The A stands for affinity (unforced enthusiasm).
To form an A-Group, men commit to taking on a service-oriented project of some sort, and – just as importantly – commit to using the project as a leaping-off point to do their work. It was inspired by the experience of MOS, who come together to cook dinner, but use cooking dinner to explore their shadow and gold in a supportive container.
A-Groups are like that – just swap out “cooking dinner” with whatever service project you like, anything you’ve got an affinity for.
One advantage of A-Groups is that the format, schedule, openness to guests, etc., can all be customized to fit the nature of the project and the needs / wants of the A-Group. You don’t even have to have just one: the group that invented A-Groups, the Next Men in San Francisco, established multiple A-Groups based on men’s interests. To preserve the larger container for the post-COVID period when in-person meetings restart, they chose to keep a single monthly Zoom call on the calendar, where the whole group checks in and reports out from their A-Groups.
Early results from this experiment have been positive! For more information about A-Groups, send an email to Clay Stockton.
Waves of Work (WoW) Group Looking For a Few Men!
WoW is an iGroup based in Cupertino (made up of men from all over the Peninsula and all the way down to Santa Cruz on the Ocean to Castro Valley in the East Bay) that has been developing a different approach to iGroups, called Waves of Work. While a regular iGroup offers powerful transformational experiences on any given night, we’ve seen a huge benefit from increased and structured focus working on one area of a man’s life over an extended “season” of work. WoW, in a nutshell, offers a man a three-month season for clarifying what he wants different in his life, working on the issue using a range of tools and modalities, and then anchoring that in. For each three month season, every man in the circle declares himself and acts as either a “guide” or a “worker” enabling a sustained, longer-term approach to process work.
The group normally rents a meeting room in a local church, but since the pandemic they meet on Zoom, weekly on Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 9-ish p.m. This new meeting method actually makes the group much more accessible for men not in the immediate area!
The WoW iGroup is looking for a few more experienced men who are interested in this type of work. If you are curious to learn more, please contact Jean-Frederic at 650-224-0085 or jf@aboudarham.com.
Final NorCal Race & Racism Call Of 2020; December 8, 6:30 PDT
Join other NorCal brothers as we have our final conversation on race and racism for calendar year 2020. These meetings are not an I-group, and are intended to create space for men to own what they don’t know, or where they are struggling. Join us Tuesday December 8 at 6:30 p.m. PDT. Should you identify an area you wish to work on, we leave that to you and your I-group brothers. These meetings are to raise awareness.
Is now your time? Are you ready to take the next step in your life? Do you know a man who is ready?
Enroll in an NWTA!
MKPUSA membership keeps all this great work moving forward.
Join MKP Today!
A man may need our help to attend an NWTA; you can be that man for him.
Donate to the NCal Next Man Fund
Northern California ManKind Project © 2020
