The Great Work Boys Club were trying to raise money for a documentary through Kickstarter. Founder Scout Shepherd (or members of his team) contacted me a couple of times asking for support on this fund-raising effort. I dropped the ball and did not get anything done before their deadline hit yesterday. I regret not stepping up to help.
If I can, I will try to set up an interview with Scout or a member of his team and see what their plan is going forward. These young men are socially engaged - and that is important to helping the next generation of young men.
However, they have not given up:
Hey everyone, thank you so much for all of your support in this project's evolution. We didn't reach our goal, but we're not even remotely discouraged; we're just going to find another way to make it work. If you'd like to follow this project and see where it continues to go, please go to greatworkboysclub.com, like and subscribe to our e-mail list! We're thinking of new ways to keep the vision going, no matter what.
We started as an online support community for boys and men, with a primary focus on physical and mental well-being. Within two months the community had grown to some thousand users from all over the United States and Europe; at this point we decided to leave our jobs and lives to travel around the United States and form our own non-profit dedicated to enabling others through service and high-adventure outdoor trips, while promoting honesty, openness and vulnerability as the main tenets of one's relationship with oneself and others.
We have been working with boys and men for months now, many of them orphans and all of them coming from serious familial dysfunction. Our ambition is to continue traveling and working with non-profit and charitable organizations all over the United States, and eventually found our own orphanage with a sustainable commitment to enabling young boys and men through our values and a ritualistic departure from their "normal" lives into a high-adventure camping trip where they will develop and hone their own self-reliance and esteem. We will establish a physical space that will serve as a summer retreat for boys and young men, with admission requirements centered around the merits of volunteerism and activism in their communities. We are also in the process of becoming an NGO, and have long term ambitions of involvement in international humanitarian aid and relief work.
We are interested in working with any organization devoted to just causes and enabling men and women through direct action.
We are now recruiting for a South American service trip. Please submit your resume along with a short essay detailing your perspectives and experiences with aiding and enabling others. Experience in relief work, uniformed services, NGOs or paramedic/rescue are encouraged but not required. Strength of character and resolve to help others will be prioritized over professional experience.
Here is some information about the film they were trying to make - and I suspect will eventually end up being made. This sounds to me like something The Good Men Project might like to support - although I am sure Scout already contacted them.
A few months ago we decided to bootstrap the beginnings of this project on our own, and now we're seeking support from the kickstarter community. We are all honored to be a part of this discussion. Please share this by clicking the like button, we want to increase our surface area as much as possible. We consider this a massive contribution and are extremely grateful for every person that takes the time to reach out on our behalf.
The GREAT WORK BOYS CLUB follows five men across the country as they begin a conscientious dialogue surrounding men's physical and mental well-being. We would like to continue to examine perspectives on masculinity with men and women from all walks of life, affected by the spectrum of human experience, with a focus on promoting openness, honesty, and vulnerability as the foundation of a capable man's relationship with himself and others. We hope to provide an alternative venue for examination of the self for men who do not feel accessed by such ideals as 60-day six pack abs, "toughing it out," and consumption as a means of measuring one's self-worth.
The GREAT WORK BOYS CLUB aims to take a glimpse into the spectrum of stories that comprise coming of age and masculinity, as told by anyone and everyone affected by the state of affairs of man in the world today.
We are currently travelling across the UNITED STATES, hosting interviews, adventuring into the unknown, exploring the territory of our forefathers, and reaching out to as many young men as possible in hopes of supporting a platform for brotherhood and good will. We want to continue this conversation, and we need your help.
We hope to:
Get our five man team out of a Honda CRV and into something more sensible, like a box van.
Fuel our trusty steed as we push onward, zig zagging up and down the US filming.
Continue to feed our videographers.
Continue to feed our developer while he trickles our content onto our facebook so that you can keep up with the GREAT WORK BOYS CLUB as it happens, from the field.
Stay outfitted properly to stay safe while we camp in the North American local wilderness.
Outfit the team with microphones to improve the quality of our capture audio, we're currently using onboard sound.
These are the five men the film sought to document:
Scout Shepherd -- Scout grew up in a rural area, surrounded by men measured by their capacity to work hard. He is an Eagle Scout, and has taught leadership conferences with the Boy Scouts of America at the national level. A proponent of packing light, and going fast--he is well versed in survival skills, and is a preparedness and martial arts instructor. His lifestyle is high adventure, and he enjoys leading open water dives, sailing trips, bouldering excursions, and fast paced wilderness challenges. Scout wants to be a man enabled to enable others, and surrounds himself with individuals that push their limits in the safest and most efficient ways possible. He is the founder of the GWBC, and is pushing our team to film a documentary that stands as a testament to an immeasurable personal power that affects change in all of us.
Chance Walker -- Coming from suburbia, Chance was destined to live out the middle class ideal. Private school, graduate school and a cushy corporate job ended up leaving him unfulfilled. He left the corporate world for a life of tech entrepreneurship and even after two challenging years, felt that something was missing. Even as a young successful adult, he knew he misunderstood what it means to be a man, and began searching for a new definition of masculinity. As if by fate, he met Scout and began instilling openness, honesty and vulnerability as a foundation for masculinity. He immediately realized that starting this dialogue for men around the world was his calling.
Clark Kane -- Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Clark is a software developer by trade. As an entrepreneur, he refused to work for a living, and instead made a living. Growing up fairly isolated and with only a few close friends (most online), Clark found it increasingly difficult to relate to others and find his place in the world as he grew older. Quiet and often called shy, Clark had a certain insecurity about him that he felt he had to shake off. Slowly but surely, he began a self-driven transformative process to manhood after college, the culmination of which he knows lies in this trip -- this documentary.
Jack Elliott -- Formerly a student in Seattle, WA. With only 24 hours notice, Jack decided to drop everything in his life to jump off the flat earth with 4 brothers. Going from relative isolation to depending on and supporting a group of men has proven to be an immense challenge, and all the while looking inward at his own capability to help himself and others. This trip has galvanized his belief that isolation and passivity are the enemies of men, and moving forward will be an exercise in self-awareness and growth.
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