Cooking up a healthier recipe for masculinity

Danial Jamal says his idea didn’t start with extensive research or an elaborate plan, rather it began with the desire to better understand what he describes as “the things men carry with them, what they hand down and what they hide.”  

The University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work alum observed that many young people replicate the cycles of harm they witnessed at home, leading to a situation where, as he puts it, “hurt people often hurt people.”  

“I kept wondering what helps men break those cycles and build new ones,” says Jamal, BSW'25. “That question became the starting point for everything that followed.” 

With a wisdom that belies his age, the recent Bachelor of Social Work graduate began thinking about creating spaces where men could more easily express themselves, realizing that the usual research settings aren't conducive to the ways in which men naturally open up.  

“Young guys are simply not going to sit around in a circle and start discussing their feelings about masculinity and fatherhood,” Jamal says. 

“It’s not going to happen.”  

In a moment of inspiration, he looked for an activity that would create a non-threatening space where young men could come together and unselfconsciously share their feelings around what it meant to be a man and a good father.  

As sociologist Harry Brod’s research has explored, men are far more likely to open up about personal or difficult topics when positioned side-by-side. As it turns out, the kitchen — learning to create delicious food — was the perfect environment.

A recipe for change?

Men come together in UCalgary residences to learn more about how to make delicious spicy chicken tacos, and to discuss what masculinity and fatherhood means to them.

“May I please...” 

Jamal started with friends from his community, mostly young Muslim men, with whom, he says, he’s most familiar with. He was astounded by the results.  

“It was amazing,” he says. 

“I started with some of the topics I wanted to discuss, but I framed the topic as a series of questions. For example, ‘what are five traits that should define a man?’”  

Almost unbidden, the men began unloading some of their deepest feelings about what being a man means to them, or what being a father might mean to them. 

It often revolved around the ways they wanted to be different from their own fathers. 

“We also have rules, which I think helps,” explains Jamal, who worked part-time in commercial kitchens over his university career.

“For example, if you want to get someone’s attention while we’re cooking, you have to say, ‘May I?’ That comes from restaurant practice, where people are often handling hot food or holding sharp implements.

"So, people working together in the kitchen are trained to say things like, 'Chef, may I grab that pot?’ or whatever it is, out of respect."  

As it turns out, this simple convention introduced a formal civility, which also lowered the temperature and even trickled down into the young men’s relationships outside the afternoon cooking classes.  

“The mother of one of the participants actually contacted me,” says Jamal with a chuckle. 

“She told me her son started saying, ‘May I?’ at home when speaking to her and that he doesn’t yell much anymore. 

"Instead, he begins every conversation with, 'Mum, may I?' It made their dynamic better.”  

An expanding cooking circle  

Emboldened and energized by the amazing success of his first few cohorts, Jamal began to expand the classes outside his circle to include anyone interested, and there was a lot of interest. 

As the cohorts grew, he coached his friends on how to be good facilitators, and soon found the original positive experience was replicated over and over again.  

Before long, he was approached by by the UCalgary Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Support Office and UCalgary Residence Services to create programming for the residence community. 

The two groups have a long-standing partnership focused on bringing sexual and gender based violence prevention education into residence and had been discussing the potential for a healthy masculinities group in residence. Jamal's programming seemed like it would be a great fit.

They provided him with enough funding to hire a few of his friends and past participants — Youssef Elsabban (Haskayne School of Business), Abdelrahman Alramahi (Schulich School of Engineering), and recent Faculty of Science grad Amr Gohar, BSc'25 — to be facilitators and the expanded program immediately took off.  

“As soon as things started picking up with the program, I knew for it to continue to flourish and be impactful, it had to be in the hands of other men,” says Jamal, who is currently working with the Cumming School of Medicine as an inclusive governance co-ordinator in its Indigenous, Local and Global Health Office. 

“None of this would be possible without those three guys being the true leaders of this program. They like to call me ‘Chef,’ but I like to call them ‘Chef,’ too. 

"It’s been an amazing success and absolutely exceeded all my expectations!”  

That success has led to inquiries from other groups looking to expand the program into the populations they work with, as well as Jamal’s interest in continuing to scale and adapt it for other communities.  

Creating a “Lasting Place” 

Jamal says his inspiration was fuelled by critically-acclaimed English hip hop artist and poet Loyle Carner, whose songs, like A Lasting Place, provided the beacon for his work. 

In that song, says Jamal, Carner articulates the true strength of a good man and a good father who becomes a permanent foundation for his family: "What kind of man admits his failures/turns over his heavy stones/Stands at the feet of grief and wanting and does not turn away?/What kind of man becomes a father/A lasting place.”