History

Founder/Director - Fred Jealous went to Turkey as a teacher fresh out of college. After spending 2 years immersed in the rural Turkish culture, he came to really enjoy the kind of companionships that the Turkish men had with each other. It was a more fluid, relaxed and generous companionship than he was used to at home.  Upon returning home he became aware of how well entrenched fears and competition closed off the men in his life from joy and celebration of a deep caring for each other and decided he needed to do something about it.

Fred became active in the women’s movement and asked the women “What can I do, as a man, to make things better for both women and men?” The women told him to go to men and tell them to “Stop it”. He did just that and started the Men’s Alternative to Violence program here in Monterey County. After building that organization strong enough for it to take care of itself, he became aware of the deep need to build a community of men not only for his personal support but for the support of each other. “If we were going to climb out of years and years of cultural conditioning - we were definitely going to need each other.”

In 1987 Fred started working with groups of 6 men at a time at weekly meetings in his office that he called Options for Men. Options grew into Breakthrough when these groups became so popular that the waiting list to get in was over a year. He started having “graduates” help him with the classes so he could take larger numbers of men at a time. This was a stroke of genius because these graduates became the workshop leaders that are such a huge part of what is now Breakthrough. Breakthrough has now grown to be two 17 meeting workshops called Breakthrough1 and Breakthrough2 that accommodate 20 - 30 men per workshop and currently starts 3 workshops per year.