The Boyz2Men mentoring programme inducted 105 young men at a ceremony in the gymnasium at John Gray High School on Monday morning, 14 September 2026, in its fifteenth year of operation.

The figure was given by the programme. Boys in school uniform filled the bleachers of the gymnasium for the ceremony, seated in rows behind a line of adults that included uniformed officers, government officials, school staff and members of the community.

The programme began in 2011 and operates as a non-profit organisation. Its directors say it exists to give boys who are without a father at home, or without another adult to guide them, a structured route through adolescence, and the induction is the point at which a boy formally joins.

Christopher Murray, one of the programme's directors, told The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) that the ceremony existed to mark the boys' entry, and that demand for places had been running ahead of it. "Quite a number of them have been asking for quite a while to join the program, so we use this as the platform or the standard for them to step up and to join the program," he said in an interview after the ceremony on Monday.

Asked why the programme remained relevant fifteen years on, Murray said it is aimed at boys without a father at home. "Because there are issues that are still left unanswered, and so we use this as a means, a vehicle to answer some of the questions in our boys' lives, those who are without fathers, those who are searching for someone to patronize so they can gain some mentorship and some guidance in their lives for the better future," he said.

The qualities the programme set out to build were self-respect and self-worth, Murray said, and the two governed everything else a boy did. "Once they're able to respect themselves and value themselves, they can look at life differently," he said, adding that a boy who did not value himself would struggle to value anyone else.

On the difficulties facing the boys the programme takes in, Murray identified what he called an identity crisis, tied to self-esteem. "If I'm not feeling like I belong, I'm not feeling like I have some value, some worth, I'm going to be searching down through the gutters of life to try and find that identity," he said. A boy given a clear sense of his own worth and a goal to pursue, he said, would fare differently from one left to find it alone.

Hartwell McField, one of the 105 inducted on Monday, said he understood induction as a matter of discipline and responsibility, and that he was looking forward to developing as a young man and bettering himself. Asked what being a positive role model meant to him, he told TCJ in an interview on Monday: "Being a positive role model to me is taking initiative, taking action, being responsible, being disciplined." Asked what advice he would give to next year's intake, McField said they should focus in school.

Murray said he had seen boys who were on a wrong trajectory change course after entering the programme, go on to pursue academic goals, and return years later as married men working across the community and offering to help run it. He did not name individuals, and TCJ has not independently verified the accounts.

Asked what he would say to the wider community, Murray gave the phrase he said the programme worked to. "See the man before judging the boy," he said, arguing that adults who had made serious mistakes at the same age now held responsible positions across the islands, and that boys entering the programme were owed second and third chances.

The 105 inducted on Monday will spend the coming school year in the programme, which runs alongside their schooling.