When Seth Hayward started a YouTube channel it was because he felt a passion to help people – especially other young men.
He began while he was still at high school and has carried on his interest as a member of Menspeak, a scheme aimed at young men at Bermuda College, which has seen significant success.
“It all started in my last year of high school where I found that I had something to say to help people out,” said Seth, who is studying Pre-Health Science and hopes to go to university.
“I felt like a lot of people, due to social media, lacked authenticity,” he said, when asked what prompted him to start. “Particularly in young men because I felt that they didn’t want to be themselves. They would much rather be like everyone else.
“Instead of conforming to the norm, joining social media and conforming to everyone else and what everyone else was doing, I sought to be myself and just stay calm.”
Does he think there’s more pressure on men, young men, in particular at the moment?
“I would say ‘yes’ because we tend not to ask for help, because we don’t think we need it. But oftentimes whenever we think that we don’t need help, that is when we actually do need it.”
His involvement with Menspeak came following a meeting with Lyndon Jackson, the acting Director of the Counselling and Career Centre at Bermuda College, who founded the scheme.
A student organisation, Menspeak was established by Mr Jackson in 2004 to help young men, addressing issues they face and helping to overcome them.
“When I first came on the Bermuda College campus, I noticed that there weren’t any males in leadership positions. We know that with males, in particular, one of the challenges they face is around leadership roles.
“If you say to them, ‘Are you interested in developing your leadership skills?’ they say, ‘I’m not a leader, or I don’t want to be in that space because it’s a nerdy kind of space’.
“But once they get involved, they understand that leadership could mean a lot of different things and they become a lot more comfortable with the notion of being front and centre and the benefits they can get from that,” added Mr Jackson.
He said that many of the young men that entered the College may not have had any mentoring or a significant man in their lives.
“So that’s where things like Menspeak helps to get guys together in one room, having a conversation about what it’s like to be a male in Bermuda today and how you navigate that space.
“From that, they talk about how they can be more active and involved and connect with each other and then connect with the issues that not only exist on campus but beyond, in the community.
“Menspeak creates a space for those sorts of things to occur, and I think young males need that.”
What kind of success is he seeing and can he measure it? “Yeah. That’s the challenge right there,” he admits.
However, he points to a football league he established which attracted about 50 male College students.
“I looked at their grade point averages at the beginning and at the end, and there were students who, for the first time, had a passing GPA.
“It told me that there’s something about connections and about connecting with people, particularly men, which promotes success, which then encourages and supports more success.
“It reinforced what I already knew, that when students have relationships or are connected to something in the College, they’re going to do better. It’s about confidence.”
He added: “In my last group, there were three or four who were really high flyers and a couple that were struggling a bit. But they moved up a notch when they were around those guys.”
If Menspeak was about leadership, how did he define leadership? “I would define it as commitment to personal growth and to showing up in whatever space you’re in, showing up fully,” said Mr Jackson.
Social media can be a difficult place to navigate, crowded with voices – some of them harmful, such as Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American personality known for his divisive views.
“Social media comes up in conversation as a space to navigate generally but the guys, they talk about it, they know what route they want to go down and what route they don’t want to go down.
“I don’t hear that kind of influence coming out in our particular groups.”
He believes that if men have connections and relationships with other men that “it feeds that motivation to succeed because now there’s a level of respect and accountability that you have with someone”.
“So, the expectations become shared expectations.”
