SAN­DRA L BLOOD

“To be­lieve in our­selves is pow­er­ful. To doubt what we are ca­pa­ble of ren­ders us pow­er­less,” says Garth Voisin, a T&T-born, Los An­ge­les–based men’s and boys’ so­cial ad­vo­cate.

He adds, “Men do what they are taught to cope with dis­ap­point­ment, pain, anger, fail­ure, and even suc­cess. They ei­ther in­ter­nalise or lash out be­cause they’ve been con­di­tioned to think no­body cares. They don’t open up and choose to deal with it them­selves—most times, by them­selves.”

A sea­soned pro­fes­sion­al with more than a decade in the health and well­ness in­dus­try, Voisin be­lieves there is a tremen­dous lack of ap­pro­pri­ate or ad­e­quate ed­u­ca­tion­al tools and out­lets to sup­port men and boys.

“At the mo­ment, men and boys are be­ing left be­hind,” he as­serts. “From the lack of re­sources to the lack of work­shops and pro­grammes geared to­wards them, even the mar­ket­ing has shift­ed to fo­cus more on women and girls.”

Voisin notes that boys are drop­ping out of school at high­er rates than girls, un­der­scor­ing the need for tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions. “Find­ing pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties that ap­peal to boys should be a pri­or­i­ty, be­cause the feed­back is that there are cur­rent­ly no pro­grammes they’re in­ter­est­ed in. We have to dig deep­er than the sur­face-lev­el or man­dat­ed ap­proach­es we’ve been us­ing.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that men and women learn and ex­press them­selves dif­fer­ent­ly, he says many ba­sic strate­gies can work for both. “What makes the dif­fer­ence is just that we are dif­fer­ent—from the way we learn to the way we com­mu­ni­cate. We need to un­der­stand and ap­ply dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es. One of the rea­sons men and women butt heads is be­cause we cook­ie-cut things and ex­pect bet­ter re­sults when one side just doesn’t get it—lit­er­al­ly.”

Turn­ing to men’s ap­proach to health, Voisin high­lights a long-stand­ing cliché: “Men don’t like go­ing to doc­tors.” The is­sue, he ex­plains, is root­ed in up­bring­ing. “Who is the ex­am­ple? Most men didn’t grow up see­ing their fa­thers or male rel­a­tives go to the doc­tor un­less some­thing was wrong. So there’s no lead-by-ex­am­ple cul­ture. We are very re­ac­tive when it comes to our health—whether it’s ill­ness or main­tain­ing a healthy lifestyle.”

He proud­ly shares a sto­ry from one of his clients who con­front­ed men­tal ill­ness head-on and over­came it. Af­ter open­ing up about his strug­gles dur­ing a group con­ver­sa­tion, the man took proac­tive steps: he joined a gym, carved out per­son­al time, and cre­at­ed health­i­er rou­tines.

Voisin al­so re­flects on men’s men­tal health, of­fer­ing one of his own “sim­ple but ef­fec­tive” meth­ods for main­tain­ing calm. “I love go­ing for a walk. It brings clar­i­ty and calm to my day, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause I walk ear­ly in the morn­ing. Sit­ting qui­et­ly for a few min­utes al­so helps. As an ear­ly ris­er, the qui­et helps me get in­to a bet­ter frame of mind. It’s sim­ple but ef­fec­tive.”

Start­ing with boys

Voisin em­pha­sis­es that build­ing health­i­er men be­gins long be­fore adult­hood. “We must take time to start from the be­gin­ning. In­tro­duc­ing pro­grammes and ed­u­ca­tion for our boys from ear­ly will set them up for a bet­ter fu­ture—and ben­e­fit so­ci­ety as a whole. Hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions ear­ly and get­ting oth­ers in­volved in guid­ing our boys will make all the dif­fer­ence.”

Voisin is al­so a per­son­al train­er and coach, en­tre­pre­neur, and au­thor of The Jour­ney Con­tin­ues: EVOLVE, a se­ries of self-help mo­ti­va­tion­al books. As founder of The Dear Men Project and a Caribbean men and boys so­cial ad­vo­cate, he aims to strength­en con­nec­tions be­tween Caribbean men and their com­mu­ni­ties, with a fo­cus on over­all health and well­ness—both men­tal and phys­i­cal.

The ac­tor, mod­el, and for­mer GNC T&T brand am­bas­sador is co-own­er of 2 Per­cent Inc., which pro­motes phys­i­cal and men­tal well­ness and has cre­at­ed a prod­uct line specif­i­cal­ly for men. Through his so­cial me­dia plat­forms, he shares in­sights de­signed to cre­ate mean­ing­ful, pos­i­tive im­pact for Caribbean men and boys. As a T&T na­tive, he en­cour­ages men to pri­ori­tise self-care, de­vel­op a growth mind­set and pur­sue their as­pi­ra­tions.

Voisin in­vites the pub­lic to con­tin­ue the in­spi­ra­tional jour­ney with him as he works to bridge the gap be­tween Caribbean men, them­selves, and those who love them. On No­vem­ber 14 (In­sta­gram on­ly), he launched Episode 4 of Man on the Move: Ex­plor­ing the Men­tal Side of the Caribbean Man’s Jour­ney.

Voisin leaves this re­minder: “It’s go­ing to be a long road back if we con­tin­ue to leave out our men and boys—if the idea is to cre­ate a so­ci­ety that works.”

The Jour­ney Con­tin­ues: EVOLVE is avail­able on Ama­zon Kin­dle.