Boys need space and support on their journey from youth to adulthood. That's one of the fundamental ideas behind a mentoring program for men ages 12 to 17 that is starting in Santa Fe this spring.

Boys to Men New Mexico is looking for both adults and teens who want to be part of the program that organizers say is an experiment to reinvent male communities.

The program begins with a special no-girls-allowed weekend where adult men and teenage boys who have gone through the training participate in drumming, physical activities and sharing of their own histories at a Jemez Mountains campsite in a rite of passage. Then the relationships continue through regular group meetings and outings.

"It's really open to men of all stripes. What we want to do is surround teenage boys with a whole bunch of good models," said David River, a program organizer. "We are sort of creating a tribe or a good gang. We want the boys to see not one model of how to be a man, but 20. ... We say it's for boys at risk, and there are really not any boys that are not at risk."

Mentorship isn't turning out to be exactly what David Herzenberg pictured. After he went through the group's training for adults with more than a dozen local men, he realized something about his own transition into adulthood. Although at the age of 42, he's been a martial arts instructor for 20 years, a paramedic for 15 and a father for 11, Herzenberg picked up skills he didn't know he needed.

"To be a mentor means to listen, not to preach, and not to protect and not to change. It's just simply to hold space," he said. "It's really powerful for me to sit with these boys because I then get to remember that feeling of being stuck between not being a boy anymore and people having different expectations for me, but also not having any authority or any control or any power in my world because I was not an adult."

Herzenberg, a captain with the Santa Fe Fire Department, and River, who has a family mediation practice, are joined on the group's board of directors by Douglas Maahs, owner of Honey-Do home repair; Ben Gaddes, a recent graduate of St. John's College, and Jorge Castillon, a counselor at Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families.

Boys to Men New Mexico, a registered nonprofit, is inviting the community to learn about the program and consider the plight of boys with a Thursday night screening at Warehouse 21 of the film Journeymen — a study of at-risk boys that highlights the mentoring project, which has been going on in other states since the late 1990s.

The proceeds from an $8 suggested donation will be used to defray the cost of the weekend programs. The first is planned April 16. Following the documentary, a panel discussion will feature Paul Golding, editor of the Santa Fe Boys newsletter; Stefan Hermann, executive director of Boys to Men Central California Coast, and others.

For more information, contact River at (505) 216-9752 or e-mail: contact@btmnm.org. Information is also available at www.boystomennewmexico.org.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.