In this episode, I speak with Ben, a Ph.D. candidate at Western Sydney University with a social work practice background in community mental health, group work with men and boys, and community development (with the Penrith Panthers Rugby League Club). He is the founder of two social work-focused podcasts (Social Work Stories and Social Work Discoveries), and has been tutoring across various social work subjects for the Masters and Bachelors of Social Work at WSU since 2017. He has just submitted his Ph.D. which investigates the complexities of relationships between men and boys in a dynamic group mentoring program at the Penrith Panthers called Building Young Men. Ben is embedded in the Building Young Men project as a mentor, researcher, and program developer, which he loves.

Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:

• Panthers on the Prowl - https://panthersontheprowl.com.au/
• Building Young Men program - https://panthersontheprowl.com.au/programs/building-young-men/
• Social Work Discoveries podcast - https://swdiscoveries.com/
• The Social Work Stories podcast - https://socialworkstories.com/
• Michael Flood’s book: Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention - https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137442109
• Steven Roberts’s book: Young Working-Class Men in Transition - https://www.routledge.com/Young-Working-Class-Men-in-Transition/Roberts/p/book/9780367473723
• bell hooks’s book: The Will to Change - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Will-to-Change/bell-hooks/9780743456081
• Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (Loic Wacquant) - https://loicwacquant.org/books/
• Sage’s Handbook of Youth Mentoring - https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/handbook-of-youth-mentoring/book234516
• Jim Ife's book: Community Development in an Uncertain World - https://sites.google.com/a/bagygln.web.app/mv/479018-fZmyAAAA
• Ben on Twitter - https://twitter.com/benlukejoseph
  

This episode's transcript can be viewed here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZTTqI9AUKNIh51EEkvn7LspqQv_rLzVqjuPwRYRr5Ro/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.