By Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator

Each month, WAMU features one or more local nonprofits in a segment called “Community Minute.” This month, two Catalogue for Philanthropy charities are featured on the radio and online: City Kids Wilderness Project and Man Can Stop Rape. While we always enjoy reading about our nonprofits in the Catalogue, hearing directly from staff members on the radio brings their stories to life in a new way.

City Kids Wilderness Project offers experiential learning programs for inner-city youth, utilizing the outdoors and a natural environment as a classroom for academic, recreational and life skills. Development Associate Mike Macrina shares the story of a City Kids alumnus who is now a freshman at West Virginia University, and will be working in Alaska with the National Outdoor Leadership School this summer — and attempting the first all-African American summit of the highest peak in North America.

Men Can Stop Rape‘s goal is to build a movement that works specifically with young men, redefining the traditional version of masculinity and enlisting men as partners in the fight against sexual violence and violence against women. Executive Director Neil Irvin talks about how men’s violence against women is not just a women’s issue. He speaks of a young man who participated in a Men Can Stop Rape program, starting in the 9th grade, and who embodied the definition of victimhood. This young man grew and changed through the program, at the end publically sharing with others how he learned that no one asks for any form of sexual or domestic violence.

Both organizations offer a new perspective to youth, a chance to look at their lives and opportunities in a different way, and make a decision to change, either by embracing nature as a living classroom or challenging the dominant idea of “being a man” in today’s society. More information on these nonprofits, and more like them, is available in our online catalogue.