With special guests:
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Richard Aston & Ruth Kerr
…in onversation with Bill Kable
On this program we get to talk to good people who are making a difference in our society. Our guests today, Richard Aston and his wife Ruth Kerr, fit this category and they speak to us from across the ditch in New Zealand.
For 15 years Richard and Ruth through the Big Buddy program provided fatherless boys with a buddy, someone who can show them the way to manhood. These buddies are volunteer mentors who are carefully chosen by going through a detailed screening. The boys know they can rely on their buddies to turn up when expected and listen to what is happening in the boys’ lives. And they get to do fun things.
Having seen up close and personal what makes boys tick Richard and Ruth have distilled for us what works and what does not work when the aim is to develop our boys into adults. This is practical and down to earth advice set out in their new book Our Boys:Raising strong, happy sons from boyhood to manhood.
The book is divided into different stages as boys make this transition, so we hear about the most important considerations for boys under 4 years of age, then from 4 to 7, 8 to 11, 12 to 17 and then beyond 18. Richard and Ruth argue strongly for the role of men in the life of children even at very early ages and from then on manhood is “caught not taught”. Sometimes we are not even aware of how important a little lift of the eyebrows or a wink can be to a developing boy not sure of approval for himself and his actions.
And some good news for men, it is not a requirement that you are perfect in order to have that good effect on the growing boy. More important is that you are authentic, flaws and all.
At a time when it is arguable that there is a boy crisis, boys are falling behind at school, the suicide rate is appalling, this book with all its practical advice is an essential for our society.
Yet Ruth and Richard do not forget the words of Celia Lashlie to whom the book is dedicated and a previous guest on Dads on the Air; Boys are more than the sum of the “problems” we label them with: they are gorgeous – creative, fun, adventurous and capable of great depth.
In this program there are lots of great ideas for anyone spending time with a boy growing up and every one of them is road tested. Don’t miss it.
Richard made guitars and co-founded a community in Golden Bay before returning to Auckland in the late 1970s and working in engineering, manufacturing, marketing and corporate IT (NCR & IBM) as he raised a family. He has been married to Ruth for over 33 years and has four grown children and four grandchildren.
He chose to become a corporate refugee when he picked up the reins as CEO of Big Buddy in late 2002. Back then it was a fledgling, West Auckland social agency, struggling to meet its vision of matching good male mentors with fatherless boys. Blending his lifelong interest in psychology with his management, corporate IT and sales skills, he set about building Big Buddy into a nation-wide social agency.
Richard focused on building a sustainable funding base before setting about creating a rigorous, world-renowned psychological screening process, to identify child abusers, and CRM database that could support robust mentoring matches. Big Buddy has since matched over 750 boys with mentors and is poised for more growth.
Confident of its future, Richard left Big Buddy in August 2017 to pursue his passion for supporting non-profits to be the best organisations they can be. Aston Kerr was born!
Richard has been on school boards, sat on central and local government panels and is currently chair of Consumer New Zealand. He is passionate about social issues – particularly fathering – and the simple power of people helping each other to solve those issues.
Ruth has a background in journalism, documentary research, editing, public relations and writing – the broad area of publishing. She managed communications at Big Buddy for 15 years – both voluntarily and on contract.
Ruth had the privilege of being a hospice biographer and has written and managed a number of personal and institutional biographies. She was managing editor of West: The History of Waitakere and co-authored, with Richard, Our Boys: Raising strong, happy sons from boyhood to manhood
Ruth had one child when she partnered with Richard and his two young children in the early 1980s. They embarked on the blended family roller-coaster before having a child together. Ruth is actively involved with her four children and four grandchildren.
Passionate about social issues – particularly family violence – she has served on the board of teen parent non-profit Thrive and has been involved in fundraising for other social agencies. Her strengths are in interviewing and writing.
Song selections by our guests: My Father’s Eyes by Eric Clapton & Kooks by David Bowie
Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 21 July 2016.