Several studies have provided promising evidence on the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of adapting programs for men and boys across ages and cultures.
The Coaching Boys Into Men (CBIM) program was established in the United States and then adapted for India. Both programs have been evaluated and demonstrated significant impacts on bystander intentions and behaviors, as well as attitudes towards gender.
Program overview
- Program: Coaching Boys Into Men
- Organization: Futures Without Violence
- Strategy: Norms & Values
- Intervention Type: Working with men and boys to challenge stereotypes, toxic masculinity and norms that justify violence
- Ranking: This intervention is categorized as PROMISING
- Location: United States/India
- Age Group: Early and late adolescence
- Gender: All
The CBIM program recognizes that athletics and coaches play a unique and influential role in the lives of boys, rendering coaches uniquely positioned to impact positive attitudes and behaviors.
The program provides coaches with resources to promote positive attitudes and behaviors among athletes and to help prevent abuse, harassment, and assault.
The CBIM curriculum consists of trainings that illustrate approaches to model respect and promote healthy relationships, and to integrate themes of teamwork, fair play, integrity, and respect into athletes’ day-to-day habits and choices.
A cluster-randomized evaluation sought to identify changes in attitudes toward and acceptance of gender inequality and intimate partner violence, changes in the prevalence of intimate partner violence, improvements in responses to women experiencing violence, and decreases in high-risk sexual behaviors.
The evaluation found that there was a clear shift in behaviors, with the experience and perpetration of physical intimate partner violence significantly decreasing in intervention communities.