CBM Oakland founder Saleem Shakir has long employed boxing as a tool to engage youth in science while teaching discipline and other “soft” life skills to prepare them for the future. But the community leader and Scientific Boxing founder is now using the same tool to identify and train mentors in partnership with the new CBM CARES® site in Oakland.

“One of the challenges that we have in recruiting mentors to work with young people is that sometimes [mentoring is] used as a vehicle, as adults, to make ourselves feel better about our own issues. When they’re coming from that kind of self-serving place, they’re not really good mentors,” Shakir says.

He says that integrating boxing into the mandatory mentor training teaches humility and readies the men to work with young boys.  In match-ups, prospective mentors “have experiences that will expose where your ego is too strong…and you work through that. [It provides] a safe space to challenge yourself and to give us, the trainers, an opportunity to monitor how you handle those challenges,” he says.

In addition to allowing staff to better evaluate prospective mentors, the boxing training provides value for the participants as well. Camaraderie, learning from each other, building and growing with each other,. preparing themselves to keep up with the youth. These are all things, along with promoting a healthier lifestyle and building relationships, that the mentors-to-be get from the training.

“One of the first young ppl I ever tutored and mentored, my experiences with him led me to the realization that I actually wanted to be a teacher — he died about three or four years ago…he was a community organizer, a mentor…so I have always been really big on self care … once he passed away, I started Scientific Boxing for adults” to give us an outlet, Shakir says. “This is a way for mentors to support each other, so we’re able to build relationships with each other through the training — through physical and kinesthetic piece — in a peer-based way.”

And ultimately, the training benefits mentees, too.

“We know all of us as adults have our own issues, but we want to make sure those don’t manifest in the mentor-mentee relationships,” Shakir says.  The goal, he adds, is to build confidence and competence and to provide a skilled activity that mentors can then share with their mentees.

“Boys really love the order and discipline and structure, and then the pecking order — who is better at what,” he says.