Giving Your Best: Manhood Tour

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF)– It’s a space where men of all ages support and encourage each other, and share in open discussions.

Manhood Tour may sound like a testosterone- filled he-man contest of sorts, but it’s actually about developing critical thinking skills, finding solutions, and setting personal goals! We recently surprised the founders, David Mew and Corri Gordon, with the Giving Your Best award!

The Manhood Tour started about 18 months ago. It was an initiative with Augusta Partnership for Children, for fathers. But the organizers soon realized that the word “father” was limiting.

Mew says, “We would get the, ‘I’m not a father.’ Well, you are kind of a father to the neighborhood, a father figure, so we kept running into that issue so we changed the name to Manhood Tour.”

Gordon adds, “So we just like to bring the guys together because we realize in the neighborhoods they need a lot of support and a lot of resources, so we just came together to see what we could do. We feel like if we can reach them at a younger age, we can kind of groom them to be better men for themselves.”

The group meets at May Park every Wednesday night. According to Mew, they aren’t building mentors, but sharing resources and facilitating discussions that can be tough.

“Men are kind of shying away from talking about, so we try to create that environment in this space so we can guide those tough discussions. We’re here to try to change the stigma about men today… and build stronger men that are more productive citizens in the community. Again, changing that narrative and trying to build together and uplift one another.”

Manhood member, Aaron Kinzer, hopes to prevent young people from taking the wrong path. He says he lived a life — and he paid some dues for that life, including incarceration.

“But overwhelmingly, there’s a lot of our youth in our community and around the country in poverty, in different demographics, that share a background that involves crime or drugs or addiction in some form or fashion, so it’s important to have someone – or many people- who can speak to that, and I can speak to all those issues in one form or another.”

Do you know someone who deserves the Giving Your Best award? Nominate them here.

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