The Men We Need: One Utica Mentor’s Work With Young People

When DuWayne Engram thinks about the young people he works with, he thinks about possibility.

Not the kind found in commencement speeches or college brochures, but the possibility that can emerge when a young person encounters the right adult at the right moment — someone who listens, offers direction, opens a door and says, in effect: You can do more than you think you can.

That belief now sits at the center of Engram’s work as a Program Specialist with Mohawk Valley Community College’s GEAR UP program, which helps prepare students for college and careers through academic support, financial literacy, family engagement, career exploration and skills such as communication and media literacy.

But Engram’s work extends beyond college readiness.

For years, he has worked with young people around violence prevention and healthy masculinity. His concern is not simply what young men are doing. It is what they are being taught, and who is doing the teaching.

Increasingly, those teachers are not parents, coaches or educators. They are influencers, algorithms, online communities and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence systems.

And Engram believes adults need to take that reality seriously.

“If they do not hear the opposite, they will think that is the truth,” he says.

A city learning to tell a different story

Engram’s understanding of young people is rooted in Utica, a city he says has too often been described from the outside as a place that was forgotten.

That story, he believes, is becoming increasingly inadequate.

Utica experienced profound economic disruption as major employers disappeared and institutions such as Griffiss Air Force Base closed. For years, the resulting decline shaped how outsiders viewed the city — and, perhaps more importantly, how residents viewed themselves.

But Engram has watched a different Utica emerge.

Young people who once left have returned. New leaders have become involved in government and civic life. Technology and nanotechnology are creating new possibilities in the region. Murals and other forms of public art have changed the visual character of the city. Programs focused on mentoring, counseling, college access and violence prevention have expanded.

And then there is the city’s extraordinary diversity.

Utica has become home to substantial immigrant and refugee communities, including Burmese and Karen populations as well as Middle Eastern, Asian and Bantu communities. College campuses and neighborhoods increasingly reflect that diversity.

For Engram, this is not peripheral to Utica’s identity but central to it.

The city is changing, he says, and so is its narrative.

That matters because young people do not develop in isolation from the places where they live. They absorb the stories their communities tell about themselves. A city that tells young people it has no future should not be surprised when they struggle to imagine one.

Engram wants to tell them another story.

What boys are learning

One of the most difficult parts of that work is helping young men navigate competing definitions of masculinity.

Engram sees boys growing up amid tremendous social change, but he also sees old ideas about manhood remaining stubbornly powerful: that violence is a legitimate way to resolve conflict, that vulnerability is weakness, that affection between boys is something to be embarrassed about, or that relationships with girls are inherently sexual.

At the same time, the internet offers an enormous volume of material reinforcing those ideas.

Engram points specifically to online communities that promote misogyny, racism and rigid ideas about male dominance. He worries about what happens when those messages become a young person’s primary source of information about relationships and identity.

“When you think about the unhealthy content online, these people are speaking directly to these boys. Andrew Tate and others are using the internet to speak to them,” Engram says. “If you ever talk to these young men, they will fight defending Tate. They need healthy balance. I wish there were more safe voices where they can be seen, where they can talk about their goals.”

The answer, Engram believes, cannot simply be to tell boys what not to watch.

There must be something better to watch.

There must be adults who are willing to talk with them about relationships, respect, sexuality, confidence and failure without immediately judging them.

For Engram, that begins with adults understanding their own responsibility. “I wish more adults understood their role,” he says. Adults, he believes, need to take the time “to speak into young people’s lives, to teach them balance, how to love themselves, and how to be a role model.”

That also means teaching young men how to understand respect not as an abstract virtue but as something practiced in ordinary interactions. “What does respect mean to you?” Engram asks. “Valuing other people at the highest level, considering their well-being at every moment.” Sometimes, he says, that means “putting yourself away, putting yourself on the back burner,” and becoming more aware of your words before you speak.

He believes adults can model what healthy relationships look like, including relationships with young women. Young men can learn to understand consent, develop friendships with women and appreciate women as people rather than viewing every relationship through a sexual lens.

There must be places where young men can ask uncomfortable questions and hear from other people who have wrestled with the same uncertainties.

And there must be examples of masculinity that do not depend upon domination.

The courage to tell the truth

Engram has learned that one of the most powerful things adults can give young people is permission to tell the truth about their lives.

In programs such as his work with AMEND Together, young men have been given spaces where they can talk openly about their experiences, including bullying, loneliness, identity and relationships.

The point is not to force disclosure.

In fact, Engram emphasizes the opposite.

Young people have the right to pass.

“We can’t promise it will be safe every second,” he says. “That’s what we tell them. We try not to put pressure on them. They have a right to pass.”

They can remain quiet. They can submit an anonymous question. They can speak privately. They can decide what enters the conversation.

That autonomy is itself part of the lesson.

For some young people, simply discovering that others have endured similar experiences can begin to break the silence. Engram has seen this particularly among boys who are bullied and boys in the LGBTQ community, who may feel that there is nowhere safe to talk about what they are experiencing.

“Because they have a space where they can speak their truth and their experiences, they don’t feel like they have to stay quiet,” he says. “Boys who are bullied feel lonely and isolated. They feel like they can’t share it.”

A space where they can speak can change that. “That allows them to open up and speak their truth,” Engram says. “They want to be heard. They can be validated.”

Too often, he says, boys are taught to suppress what they are feeling. They learn that admitting fear, sadness or uncertainty makes them less masculine. Some become isolated precisely because they have never learned how to ask for help.

“Just hearing from other boys is helpful,” Engram says.

A room where a young man discovers that another boy has experienced something similar can therefore become more than a workshop.

It can become a corrective to isolation.

Vulnerability without a lecture

Engram does not teach vulnerability simply by defining it.

He tries to model it.

He shares aspects of his own emotional life, while maintaining appropriate boundaries. He brings young people into nature. He introduces them to guest speakers, books, talks and new experiences. He encourages them to create.

Sometimes that means painting.

During one suicide-prevention initiative in Rome, young people were invited to design a logo representing the county’s prevention efforts. Engram encouraged the boys he worked with to participate.

The exercise was creative, but it was also communicative.

Sometimes a person can put something on paper that is difficult to put into words.

Engram believes some lessons are better experienced than explained. “Maybe some of the places we have brought them show that vulnerability is what you think and feel in your heart,” he says.

Nature is part of that approach. “We bring them out into nature because of the mental health benefits of being in nature,” he says. The goal is not simply recreation but a change in environment and perspective.

Authentic selfhood teaches them without telling them, Engram says.

He exposes young people to different places, guest speakers and activities they may never have encountered otherwise. The point is to expand their sense of what is possible.

“We give them fresh, new activities that they’ve never done before,” he says.

Sometimes vulnerability begins not with a confession but with a young person discovering that there are other ways of being in the world.

The danger of isolation

If there is one word Engram returns to repeatedly, it is not loneliness.

It is isolation.

There is an important distinction.

Loneliness can be a feeling. Isolation can become an environment.

“The worst thing for me, it is not loneliness. It is isolation,” Engram says. “Prolonged isolation is not healthy.”

A young person can fail and recover if there are people around to help him get back up. He can struggle academically and recover if a teacher notices. He can make a mistake in a relationship and learn from it if someone is willing to help him understand what happened.

“You can bounce back from failure if you have support,” Engram says. “Even if people fail, you keep those connections.”

Engram knows this personally.

He did not complete his first attempt at college. He left school and entered the workforce. Eventually, however, a high school mentor intervened.

That mentor connected him with an organization that helped him return to college. Someone sat down with him, helped him identify a major and checked in with him regularly.

The difference was support.

Engram went on to earn an associate degree, bachelor’s degree and master’s degree.

He does not describe that trajectory as evidence of extraordinary individual determination alone.

He describes it as evidence of what can happen when someone refuses to let a young person disappear.

That experience informs how he works today.

“I try to teach young people about support,” he says. Early in the school year, he encourages students to establish relationships with teachers, mentors and other adults who can become part of their support network. “Make those connections with teachers. Have an adult, a mentor.”

The message is straightforward: You should not have to navigate everything alone.

The new problem no one can ignore

Now there is another layer to the problem.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the social environment in which young people develop.

Engram has encountered training and discussion around AI companions and chatbots that simulate relationships. He worries about what happens when technology begins to substitute for human connection rather than supplement it.

The issue, again, is isolation.

If a young person can construct an artificial relationship tailored entirely to his preferences, what happens to his capacity to negotiate the complexity of real relationships — with all their unpredictability, disagreement, compromise and vulnerability?

Engram does not pretend to have a perfect solution.

But he believes adults have to begin paying attention.

Technology is not going away. Neither are the algorithms competing for young people’s attention.

That makes the human relationships surrounding young people even more important.

His parents taught him something, too

Engram’s philosophy is also shaped by his own childhood.

He describes himself as fortunate. He grew up with both parents, consistent family structure and parents who made sure his needs were met. His mother worked as a certified nursing assistant in the health care field. His father spent nearly three decades working at a Walmart warehouse, often putting in long days beginning before dawn.

From his father, Engram saw dedication.

He saw someone getting up early, working physically demanding hours and doing what was necessary to provide for his family.

Yet Engram also remembers something else about his younger self: he lacked confidence.

He now understands that his problem was not a lack of ability.

He needed an avenue through which that ability could become visible.

That insight may be one of the reasons he is so committed to exposing young people to possibilities.

“I think you expose them to all of their possibilities,” he says. “One way is not the only way.”

When he was growing up, he says, boys often received a narrow picture of what they could become. Sports were one obvious pathway. “The only thing we thought we could be when I was growing up was an athlete.”

Other careers were less visible. Boys he knew did not necessarily imagine themselves working in nursing or service fields.

“We have learned that,” Engram says. The responsibility now is to expose young people to “the many opportunities.”

Maybe they want to become nurses. Maybe they want to work in technology. Maybe they want to serve their communities. Maybe they want to become entrepreneurs or social-media creators.

Even if the first idea does not work, there can be another.

The job of adults, he believes, is not to dictate one correct path.

It is to help young people explore the possibilities responsibly.

“Strength is not always muscles,” Engram says.

What young people have taught him

Perhaps the most revealing part of Engram’s philosophy comes when the question is turned around.

What have the young people taught him?

His answer is confidence.

“They have taught me about confidence,” Engram says. “I am the adult in the room, but to be honest, there are places where I don’t feel confident. I’m not always confident. I will be honest about that.”

The young people he works with, he says, can be remarkably expressive.

“There is something about this generation,” he says. “They are very confident in their friendships, how they dress, and how they express themselves. They’re so out there with it.”

They are also more likely to form friendships across differences.

Some know what they want.

Some want to serve their communities.

Some encourage Engram himself to pursue ideas and dreams.

They remind him that growth is not something adults finish and young people begin.

It moves in both directions.

“When you have a group of boys, there are one or two boys that the leader will ask to participate,” Engram says. “When you have the energy to do something, they just want to do it.”

That energy can become a positive force when adults create spaces where young people can lead. “When you’re young, you let your energy drive you,” he says. “Traditionally, I’ve had boys who set great examples in our club spaces.”

The work ahead

Engram is not naïve about the challenges facing young people in the Mohawk Valley.

Academic disparities remain. College access remains uneven. Young men continue to struggle with expectations surrounding masculinity, relationships and emotional expression. Digital culture introduces new risks faster than many adults can understand them.

But Engram’s work is ultimately less about diagnosing the problem than creating alternatives.

A mentor instead of an algorithm. A conversation instead of silence. A friendship instead of isolation. A creative outlet instead of violence. A college application instead of a dead end. A community that says you belong here instead of one that tells a young person that his future has already been decided.

His own life offers a case study in the power of that approach. He once needed someone to help him see a possibility he could not yet see for himself.

Now he is trying to do the same for a generation growing up in a very different world.

For Engram, that may be the essential work: not telling young people who they are supposed to become, but giving them enough support, exposure and belonging to discover who they might become.

And in a city working to rewrite its own story, that seems fitting.

Utica’s future, like the future of its young people, is not predetermined.

It is something being built.