Meet the Modern Man Family Project, an organization helping men heal

Kris Willems stumbled on the Modern Family Man Project while he was at court. Dealing with a separation from his wife, both legal challenges and the mental and emotional toll a family division brings were isolating, but when he bumped into founder and executive director of the Modern Family Man Project, Dante Tomada, everything changed. 

While still navigating the changes in his life due to the separation, he was introduced to a world of support networks and resources he didn’t know existed.

“He gave me his card and said, ‘No matter what you think, it’s not as bad as you think it is,’” Willems tells The Wren. 

Within a few days, Willems had an appointment with Tomada, where he was met with something powerful: peer mentoring through lived experience. This concept is one of the touchstones of the Modern Family Man Project, a non-profit which grew out of Tomada’s personal experience with family conflict.

Peer support and filling the gaps

“When I went through my separation, I looked around and I saw that there was no support, no help,” Tomada explains. “I went to all the local agencies…and every pamphlet on the wall, at every single place, had a woman and a child with them. There was nothing there for me, whatsoever.”

Fast forward four and a half years to today and Tomada has a list of clients 150 names long, men who are going through similar life experiences as Tomada and are in need of support and resources. Through regular online and in-person group meetings, in addition to one-on-one peer counselling, participants learn a range of skills from navigating the hurdles of divorce and separation to addressing toxic masculinity and social issues. 

The weekly men’s support group, held in their office on the North Shore, Kamloops (Tk̓emlúps), and the Fathers In Relationship Education (FIRE) course facilitated by Modern Family Man Project staff, help participants work through various issues like co-parenting, coping mechanisms and navigating the justice system. 

“Part of the problem is that men and women are different, and how we deal with issues are different,” Tomada says. “So if you have an institution that’s mostly women dealing with men, there’s going to be that clash constantly. Whereas when I get the client, I understand them. And we can relate better.” 

When it comes to legal issues, Dante steers men in the right direction, supporting them with paperwork and helping them understand what they’re legally entitled to. They also work closely with the Parents Legal Center and the Ministry of Children and Family Development on behalf of fathers.

Both shared lived experiences and specialized programs help create a space where men feel safe, seen and able to share their stories without judgment. 

For Willems, one resource provided by the project, Fathers In Relationship Education (FIRE), has been a “life saver.”

The 10-week course has helped him identify triggers, incorporate communication techniques for healthy co-parenting and develop coping skills when situations are emotionally charged. 

“FIRE has really helped me in being able to identify where my faults and my triggers are, and what triggers certain reactions out of me and why they trigger me the way they do, and then understanding and developing a healthy sort of coping mechanism for that,” Willems says. 

In a survey of 200 participants, 75 per cent of men associated with the Modern Man Family Project reported they felt they had increased their knowledge and skills as a result of the services offered.

Another support the project offers is a weekly support group for fathers, where men come together to share their experiences, talk through solutions and work through their emotions. 

“It’s amazing how much weight comes off when you can just talk about it for four or five minutes,” Willems says of the group. “I think I talked for about three minutes last night, but after an hour and a half of listening to everybody else…we’re all uplifting, there’s no judgment.”

In the same survey, 90 per cent of participants stated their mental health is better after participating in the programs at the Modern Man Family Project. 

Coming together to mend families

The Modern Man Family Project is also coming in handy for other community resources including The Tree, a non-profit which offers programs and services for women and their families. 

Susan Wright, the executive director of Kamloops Family Resources Society which operates The Tree says the Modern Man Family Project is filling a gap her organization has been wrestling with for the 18 years they’ve been in operation. 

“Over the years, there were always requests from men that were attached to the women that we were helping, or even men we knew in the community that were seeking help, and there was nothing comparable. There was no kind of peer-driven services available for men. I think there’s a shortage.”

Now, when she has dads who are involved with the women she serves, she’s able to connect with Tomada and together, they work to find solutions that work for each individual family. She too speaks of the importance of peer mentoring, saying for her the connection of shared lived experiences was vital. 

When she first became involved with The Tree, she was three months pregnant and three months sober. Though she’d been working for many years to address some of the underlying issues that were stopping her from becoming abstinent, it was the connection and acceptance that came from other mothers just like her. 

“Being around people that understand the challenges that you’re experiencing, when you’re able to talk with them and they can share their experience where things have gone well, and where things have gone maybe not so well, it kind of gives you a blueprint on how to move forward.”

For the women she works with, The Tree becomes a sort of pseudo-family, she explains. They don’t have an intake or outake date and the support remains over time. She saw this consistency in the Modern Man Family Project for men and dads. 

“I would say dads who have experienced separations or other challenges in their relationships, sometimes they get pushed to the side. So being able to have those voices to advocate for you is huge,” she says.

That advocacy is helping to fill a gap in resources designed for men, Tomada explains.  

Anecdotally, when he applied for a grant through the Red Cross, he asked if there were any other applications for resources similar to the Modern Man Family Project and was told his was the only one.

While the landscape has improved in recent years, Tomada says they are still working to get the provincial government to recognize the need for men-focused mental health resources. 

“I see a lot of these guys wanting to change things in their life. It’s just there’s no avenues for them that are not necessarily easy, but accessible. That’s where we come in, we’re trying to make it accessible as much as possible for them.”

The Modern Man Family project is grant funded, but so far, Tomada says funding is a limitation of the services offered through the organization because it is sporadic and based on his ability to apply to enough grant opportunities. With increased funding, the scope and reach of the work could be more vast and Tomada says volunteers with experience writing grant applications would help bolster their success. 

“Volunteers around the grant process would be lovely. If I could have somebody here to help take that load off, then I could concentrate on the clients that much more. That’s where my heart is like, right?”

Programming for men, Tomada says, should be in addition to, not instead of programming designed for women. The need for lived experience and peer mentoring is vital for both groups.

“Let’s just add to it. Because we’re all part of one community. Right? You have to work together.”