EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview has been edited. No context has been changed.
Mark Watts had never given a second thought to starting a nonprofit.
“This was not in the cards for me. Never. My job was to be a good husband, good father to my three boys, and a provider for my family. That's it.”
But for those who are meant to create something special, the universe sometimes moves in mysterious ways.
“2014, I’m at church one day and our pastor, I’ve known him since he was a deacon, he says, ‘Mark, God has been moving me to tell you there’s something he wants you to do and it’s with the youth.’ That’s all he told me. So what do I do? Absolutely nothing. I carry on with my life.
“A year passes, I go to pray again, and the pastor says, ‘Mark, God is looking for you to do something with the kids.’ This is number two.
“Thanksgiving at my mom's house, a friend of the family says, ‘You have a light, and the kids just love you. I don’t know, but I think God is telling you to do something with the kids.
“Now I’m listening, but I’m still not there yet. I'm stubborn.
“I'm on the phone one night. gossiping with a good friend of mine who happens to be a minister. We’re talking sports and he stops in the middle of the conversation and says, ‘Mark. This is weird. God told me to tell that he has something for you to do with the kids.’
“That's it. That was the day.. I knew that this had to happen.”
‘This’ was Boys2Men Youth Mentoring, the Lathrup Village nonprofit which has been supporting underserved young men in their transition from childhood to adulthood since 2018.
The support they give is nothing short of incredible.
Like getting pilot lessons from a Tuskegee Airman. Like learning football from Colin Kaepernick. Like a Black Tie Gala at newly renovated Michigan Central’s Newlab, hosted by WDIV personalities Jason Coulter and Tati Amare, and featuring speakers like CSI: NY actor Hill Harper and TEDx speaker and local photographer Shawn Lee.
Mark’s vision is sweeping.
“I want Boys2Men to be just like the Boys and Girls Club of America,” Mark says. “I want a large organization that spans across the country.”
The activities he assembles for Boys2Men are dreams come true for teenage boys.
“We had a drone flying workshop where they got drone certification at the end. I had a celebrity basketball clinic. We had an augmented reality workshop where [a CAD/CAM engineer] designed a car, they put the VR on, got in the car—it was a whole thing designed just for us. I even have a former Lions player, he has a junior go-kart NASCAR team. So all the boys are gonna get to go there, work in the pits, drive on the tracks—experiences that they would have never experienced without Boys2Men.”
The program also teaches a plethora of life skills, from mental health awareness, social skills and conflict resolution, to cooking and photography classes—even etiquette training.
“How to tie a tie properly, what to do on a job interview, how to write a resume—the things that they don't even know that they're gonna need yet. [But] we never kick off with, ‘Okay, welcome to Boys2Men, we’re gonna do some etiquette training.’ No, it's like, ‘Hey, we're gonna have a freestyle game night where we can play some basketball, and guys can play some Uno, we can just talk.’ Because that will open them up.”
Mark is very particular about who he allows around his clients, or as he calls them, ‘my boys.’
“You can't just say. ‘Hey, I want to sign up for Boys2Men.’ We have to have a sit-down, I gotta lay eyes on you. You gotta tell me why. Then we do a background check. I don't play about who I have around my kids.”
Mark makes sure if you’re Boys2Men mentor, you’re a safe person to talk with.
“You can't go with the daddy approach, you can't go with the boot camp approach. They have to trust you [to] open up to you. If you're going through something that you don't want to share with your parents, you got this brotherhood here where we can talk it out and help you make the right decision.”
Mark got his vision of mentorship from his own life.
“My dad, that’s my hero. Every kid in our neighborhood knew my dad. He was the pack leader of the Scouts, he built the derby cars for the races…and now he’s the director of mentorship for Boys2Men. So our mentor of the year award is called the Frank Watts award.”
As particular as Mark is about his mentors, he’s equally as particular about who he accepts as clients.
“I want to know that you want to be here, We have an interview process. This isn't a babysitting program. This isn't a boot camp. This is somewhere that you want to be and you want to better yourself.”
One young man who bettered himself is Donald Taylor. Donald’s father committed suicide, and Donald tried to do the same. Then he found Boys2Men.
“[Donald] flies back every year [from Atlanta] to come to our black tie affair. Two years ago [at the event], he says, ‘Can I speak?’ I said, ‘Go ahead.' He got up and he said, ‘This was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was gonna commit suicide.' And he told his whole story. You talk about a roomful of tears. That was the first time I could really see the fruits of my labor.”
Other Boys2Men members give Mark similar feedback.
“The program helped me understand what people are going through. It helped me deal with not having a father figure in my life,” says Mason Fielder. For Bryant Rambus, Mark’s impact was immediate: “[Mark] looked at me and I looked at [him]—then we were friends,” Bryant says.
Boys2Men has been funded mostly by Mark, with small grants from the Skillman Foundation and the U.S. Forestry Department. To manifest his vision, Mark needs more.
“On our website, they can just click on a monthly donation. Somebody who's more financially stable can do $100 a month. Somebody else can do $25. Some of our workshops, like Black Tech Weekend, these two days cost us about $14,000 just to facilitate. This guy had to design software to show them [gaming coding].”
So far, Boys2Men has impacted about 450 kids. Mark is proud of the results.
“Not one has ever been incarcerated. Not one is dead. Every child that has been in Boys2Men has graduated from high school and went to college. We have a 100% success rate. And I plan to keep it that way.”
Mark may not have planned to inspire young men on their path to adulthood, But when the universe kept tapping on Mark’s shoulder, he listened. Mark himself puts it like this: “When you're doing God’s work and you're doing the right thing, He will put you in the right place at the right time.”