Boys Council is a strengths-based group approach for boys and youth who identify with male development to promote their safe and healthy passage through pre-teen and adolescent years. It aims to promote boys’ natural strengths, and to increase their options about being male in today’s world. The Council challenges myths about how to be a “real boy” or “real man”. It engages boys in activities, dialogue, and self-expression to question stereotypical concepts and to increase boys’ emotional, social, and cultural literacy by promoting valuable relationships with peers and adult facilitators.

The Girls Circle model, a structured support group for girls and youth who identify with female development, integrates relational theory, resiliency practices, and skills training in a specific format designed to increase positive connection, personal and collective strengths, and competence in girls. It aims to counteract social and interpersonal forces that impede girls’ growth and development by promoting an emotionally safe setting and structure within which girls can develop caring relationships and use authentic voices. The Girls Circle does not aim to provide advice, but encourages girls to share experiences that are helpful to one another.