“We’re just giving boys a place, where they can drop that macho kind of persona and just be themselves.” <\/p>\n
Those are the words of the teenage boys who run a group called Matrix, which focuses on male mental health and challenges stereotypes around masculinity.<\/p>\n
The project was set up by students at St Michael’s Church of England High School in Rowley Regis and has been nominated for a BBC Make a Difference award. <\/p>\n
They provide support and meet-ups at school, “helping our community” to “feel like they can come up to us and speak”, student Jack said.<\/p>\n
Through their campaign “Am I Manly Enough?” they encourage their peers to start honest conversations surrounding identity, vulnerability, and self-acceptance. <\/p>\n
“With this new campaign, we know the perception that you can’t cry, but we know it’s all right to have a cry,” Jack said.<\/p>\n
Another student, Kingsley, added: “Whenever someone’s crying I don’t have to say something like ‘man up’ – I can go to them and ask them if they need any help.” <\/p>\n
A highlight for the group was recognition by the Prince of Wales when he visited the school in April 2024 – an experience students have described as “surreal”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We’re just giving boys a place, where they can drop that macho kind of persona and just be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":["post-826314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}