By Mark Gofstein, Director of the MDI Cause
I am writing this letter to the hearts of MDI men. I am wondering how many of you out there could have used a mentor growing up. I had one and he was closer to me in those years than my father was.
I am writing this because I want you men to know that you matter beyond your men’s team. You matter to the youth of America. To the young men in your communities. You matter because of how we in MDI stand up for men, women and children.
We in MDI do things in our communities that we take for granted instead of letting the world know what we do, we keep it between us. That has to stop. We need to take more of an active role in grooming the leaders of the future.
Thus, there are five things I want to accomplish with the MDI cause team in 2014.
- To have each region look at putting on or participating in a young men’s initiation event or young men’s weekend and the MDI cause team to be available for consultation if necessary.
- To have more men to join my team of mentors and develop more after weekend follow-up programs by continuing to mentor young men between events.
- To develop a greater network connection with like-minded organizations to partner with them with initiation work or follow-up monthly work for young men so those young men go done a better life path than abusive behavior of any kind (i.e. drugs, physical abuse, bullying).
- For all the community service events that we do in MDI that impact ending abuse, to be documented so that all MDI men know what every Region is up to and all the men of MDI see the value of impacting the end of abuse in some essential way to humanity by making a personal contribution to their region’s efforts with community service events, especially those impacting young males.
- To have more men see a place to serve there purpose by getting involved with any time or resources they see that they can provide; whether this is manpower or land to use etc.
My goal for the MDI Cause team in 2014 is to clearly define the mission for the men to see and to get the men on board to serve that mission in some way shape or form. Again, a lot of these events are in place, we just want to cause more young men to be connected to the wisdom of the more experienced men in MDI. Every year Regions create, get involved with or serve at a high level of leadership, we just want to be more purposeful in collecting data and evolving our participation with it.
Letting you men know is important because we do a lot in small bunches of things that reduce the possibility of ending all forms of abuse, but not everyone in MDI sees or hears this success on a regular basis and that stops now.
Remember, by raising great young men, we cause them to be better equipped, enlightened way to partner with great women and to create a better place for children to thrive.