Young Men Initiative — Gender-Transformative Schooling for Boys, Belgrade & the Western Balkans

The Young Men Initiative (YMI) is a school-based, gender-transformative programme for adolescent boys, coordinated by CARE International Balkans using a curriculum ("the M Manual") adapted from Promundo's Program H, combined with the "Budi Muško" ("Be a Man") social-marketing campaign, youth camps and school clubs. Formative research ran 2006-2007, with a pilot in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia from 2007 to 2010, later expanding to Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia.
A quasi-experimental pilot evaluation surveyed roughly 2,500 boys pre- and post-intervention across nine sites, finding statistically significant gains in gender-equitable attitudes in four of the nine sites. A second, Phase II evaluation by the International Center for Research on Women ("Be a Man, Change the Rules!", 2014) surveyed 1,248 boys in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Prishtina and found attitude gains on violence, homophobia and gender roles, but no consistent evidence of behavioural change and no measurable reduction in violence against peers or partners.
The evaluators themselves flagged limitations: attitudes toward homophobia were largely unmoved, some evaluation sites saw parallel change in control groups (undermining causal attribution), and participation relied partly on volunteer self-selection. The programme nonetheless continued for over a decade, with a further phase reported active as of 2020.

Read the full analysis: https://care-balkan.org/2020/09/20/young-men-initiative-men-and-boys-as-partners-in-promoting-gender-equality-and-the-prevention-of-youth-extremism-and-violence-in-the-balkans/