To­day, in­sti­tu­tions, gov­ern­ments, or­gan­i­sa­tions, and in­di­vid­u­als around the globe will ob­serve World Day of the Boy Child (WD­BC) un­der the theme “Build­ing Self-es­teem in Boys: Stand Up, Be Heard, Be Seen.”

First com­mem­o­rat­ed in 2018, WD­BC (al­so known as In­ter­na­tion­al Boys Day) will be recog­nised in 36 coun­tries this year.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, UWI Lec­tur­er and Founder of In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day (IMD), boys are a vi­tal part of our her­itage, link­ing our past and present to the fu­ture of fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties, and so­ci­eties. In a state­ment is­sued, Teelucks­ingh not­ed that there are near­ly one bil­lion boys un­der the age of 15 around the world.

“They en­ter life with vi­brant cu­rios­i­ty and emo­tion­al open­ness. Yet, as they grow, many are so­cialised to sup­press their nat­ur­al emo­tion­al re­spons­es and taught that strength and mas­culin­i­ty mean hid­ing pain, avoid­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and not ask­ing for help. This cul­tur­al con­di­tion­ing con­tributes to ris­ing lev­els of de­pres­sion, low self-es­teem, and even sui­cide among boys and ado­les­cent males.”

World Day of the Boy Child serves as a glob­al plat­form to im­prove how we pro­tect, em­pow­er, and up­lift boys.

Dr Teelucks­ingh, founder of the day, en­cour­aged ac­tion through fa­cil­i­tat­ing open di­a­logue with boys and young men and pro­vid­ing safe spaces to share their needs and con­cerns with stake­hold­ers like ed­u­ca­tors, law en­force­ment, health­care providers, so­cial ser­vices, leg­is­la­tors, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers.

Teelucks­ingh al­so en­cour­aged sup­port for proven ini­tia­tives that ad­dressed key chal­lenges, in­clud­ing aca­d­e­m­ic un­der­per­for­mance and neg­a­tive la­belling of boys, in­creas­ing rates of de­pres­sion and sui­cide, use of boys as child sol­diers, pover­ty that forced boys to work and drop out of school, the lit­er­a­cy gap among boys, lack of pos­i­tive male role mod­els and le­git­i­mate life op­tions.