Yes. The power of role models is really important. It's partly about that strength-based approach which I mentioned before, that the way we change attitudes and behaviours is by showing the right way, not by condemning all the wrong ways. Obviously, we have to hold people to account for those things, but if you want to actually change behaviour, you have to give people a road map about how those behaviours should look. One way to do that is through role models.
Another piece of that is who the messengers are for this kind of thing for young men and boys. We think about that a lot. In certain places, for things like raising awareness, celebrities, athletes, musicians, and football players are great messengers, but for everyday behaviour change, people also want to see themselves reflected in that. That's where projects like our “It starts with you. It stays with him.” are so important, because men who want to be better fathers, who want to be more involved in their children's lives don't want to have to think that they have to be celebrities or superstars to do that. They want to see their own experiences reflected in that effort.
Many men, particularly when we think about fatherhood now, want to do things differently for their kids, whether they're young boys or young girls. Many men also tell us they don't know how because nobody did it for them. That's not blaming their fathers, because probably for a lot of us our fathers are from a different generation, my own father included, whom I love dearly. He has probably said about six words about consent and sexual health education and healthy relationships to me in my entire 43 years of life, and that's probably a lot.
Having these kinds of ideas around role models is a critical way to change it, but it's not the only way. What we know from some other work that the World Health Organization has done in evaluating projects with men and boys is that these things are most effective when the work can happen in small groups, when people can see it reflected in the communities that they're part of, whether that's a school, a family, or a faith group, and when they see those messages reinforced in the public. If you can tackle it from all three places where they're learning in small groups and testing out the role modelling behaviour they're seeing and the messages are reinforced publicly, that's when we see the best and longest lasting change in attitude and behaviour.