webinar

Building Belonging for Boys of Color

PAST EVENT
August 11, 2026

As loneliness among young people reaches historic levels, boys of color often experience unique barriers to belonging, emotional connection, and authentic relationships. During GTY’s Aug 11 Building Belonging for Boys of Color webinar, speakers explored what research and community practice teach us about creating environments where boys of color can thrive.

Top Takeaway

Boys and young men face a “crisis of connection,” rooted in our antisocial culture that prioritizes autonomy, achievement, and rigid gender norms. Environments that promote deeper human connection and development of social and emotional capacities reduce isolation and promote “social health.” Long-term change requires individual commitment and systemic shifts in policy, program design and cultural narrative.

More Takeaways

  1. Social Health Predicts Mental Health: Mental health struggles among boys, including depression and violence, are often symptoms of deep social isolation. Social health is a foundational human need that must be prioritized before mental health can be addressed.
  2. Embracing Our Full Humanity Promotes Social Health: Our culture privileges hard or stereotypically masculine capacities and needs over our soft or stereotypically feminine capacities and needs: thinking over feeling, me over we, autonomy over connection. Encouraging the full range of needs and capacities in boys and men is not “feminizing” them; it is embracing their full humanity.
  3. Listening with Curiosity Challenges Stereotypes: Boys and young men of color feel deeply stereotyped. Listening with curiosity – making a connection, asking about their values and experiences, is an effective antiracist intervention because it enables boys and young men of color to feel seen as their true selves.
  4. The Power of Pro-Social Design: Programs where young people co-design their own spaces are effective because they meet youth where they are and value their input as experts in their own experience.

Learn More

What 10-Year-Olds Know About Mental Health That the Rest of Us Forgot, Dr. Niobe Way on the Good Life Project Podcast, August 10, 2026. Click here.

Niobe Way books and research, click here.

The Ever Forward Club, click here.

Million Mask Movement, click here.

Helping Boys in School Make them Feel Safe To be Themselves, article about the Ever Forward Club in the Hechinger Report, June 29, 2026. Click here.

What Can Philanthropy Do?

  • Fund Human Connection and Trust Innovators: Shift investment strategies to support spaces and programs that foster deep, long-term human connection rather than funding short-term, output-driven interventions. Revise risk calculations to support innovators whose work is rooted in lived experience and community.
  • Redefine Impact Metrics: Instead of focusing on individual achievement metrics, evaluate how an intervention strengthens “social health”– connection, empathy, and relational intelligence.
  • Invest in Youth-Led Governance: Fund models that engage youth as active designers. Prioritize programs where young people are empowered to advise on, design, and direct program strategy and resources.
  • Promote Systemic Cultural Change: Support initiatives that infiltrate educational and technological frameworks with “connection by design.” Fund and advocate for approaches that teach children to prioritize the collective “we” over the individual “me”.

Memorable Quotes

Curiosity is the secret sauce of all human connection, and we have to infuse it into all parts of our life.

—Dr. Niobe Way, New York University

The things he lets the world see are happy, smart, outgoing, and caring, but what’s happening behind the mask, the thing he doesn’t talk about, is a lot of intense anger.

—Ashanti Branch, Ever Forward

Loneliness is very big, and it can play mind games with you. But understanding vulnerability and showing that it gives you power are why I do this work, because I want to help my community.

—Alberto Sanchez, Ever Forward

A lot of people just need that one person in their life – parent, friend, any type of person – to show them that they’re not alone. The more I hear people’s stories, the more I want to help people.

—AJ Carter, Ever Forward

In the Ever Forward Club, Ashanti, and men like him, initiate conversations, they see how you’re doing, to form connections on a deeper level. That also inspires me, and I’m sure other young men, too, to work on our own conversational and social and emotional skills, so we can eventually become that person who inspires others and creates deeper connections.

—Dana Woods, Ever Forward

Contact the Speakers

If you’d like to follow up with any of these speakers, please reach out to GTY.

Speakers

Image of Niobe Way

Niobe Way, Ph.D.

Professor of Developmental Psychology, New York University

Dr. Niobe Way is a internationally recognized leader in the fields of human development and psychology. Her work focuses on social and emotional development, how cultural ideologies shape child development and families in the U.S. and China, and on how to use the method of listening with curiosity to make a more caring, connected, and just world.

Dr. Way is a Professor of Developmental Psychology, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH), and the Director of the Science of Human Connection Lab, all at NYU. Dr. Way received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard School of Education, and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow in the Psychology Department at Yale.

Her newest book is Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture. Her latest co-edited book is: The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution (NYU Press).

Ashanti Branch

Founder and Executive Director, the Ever Forward Club

Ashanti Branch is a recipient of the 2023 US Surgeon General’s Medallion, 4x TEDx speaker, podcaster, and Fulbright Fellow. His work with youth as an ‘emotional locksmith’ has been featured on CNN’s This is Life with Lisa Ling, and on the Kelly Clarkson Show.

He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ever Forward Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the student dropout rate through youth mentorship. He is also the creator of the award-winning #MillionMaskMovement, with 75,000 participants worldwide. Ashanti will be joined by a panel of youth participants from The Ever Forward Club.

Alberto Sanchez

Program Coordinator, Ever Forward Club

Raised in Oakland, California, Alberto is a program coordinator at the Ever Forward Club, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting young men through emotional wellness, as well as providing mentorship and leadership. Alberto’s experiences have shaped his passion for creating spaces where young people feel seen, heard, and empowered. Through his work, storytelling, and writing, Alberto inspires others to embrace vulnerability, overcome challenges, and recognize their potential to lead with authenticity and purpose.

AJ Carter

Ever Forward Club

AJ Carter is a member of the Youth Advisory Council at the Ever Forward Club.

Dana Woods

Ever Forward Club

Dana Woods is a member of the Youth Advisory Council at the Ever Forward Club.

Presented by

Grantmakers for Thriving Youth

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