Men joined in the fight to prevent domestic violence at the 16th annual Stand Up & Stride Domestic Violence Awareness Walk in Jacksonville in 2025. | Hubbard House
Published on June 16, 2026 at 3:06 pm
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Hubbard House has started a new initiative to help men who want to learn ways to prevent domestic violence and to help others be a positive influence.
The genesis of the “Not My City” program at Duval and Baker counties’ domestic violence counseling and shelter program is to push its message out to men of all ages, as it has to women over recent decades.
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Not My City is a violence prevention educational program that will give men and boys the tools to support violence prevention. That includes helping them to understand warning signs and to work to prevent any domestic violence,
“We want people to be able to interject themselves, support their peers, their friends, to give them safe avenues so they have a means to and a way to cope with what may be happening. It’s about being good fathers for both girls and boys,” said Hubbard House board member Joe Kovacocy. “This is just a way to teach men how to cope with this without resorting to negative interactions with their partners.”
In a news release, Hubbard House CEO Gail Patin said: “Men have a place in every part of this mission, and we know the power of men standing together in unified support for this work. We are so excited to continue to expand opportunities for men to find that connection.”
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What is Hubbard House?
Hubbard House offers domestic violence counseling and shelters for adults and children and has supported almost 165,000 survivors and children in its 49-year history.
Survivors of domestic violence who need support can go to hubbardhouse.org.
The Not My City program is a partnership between Hubbard House, the city’s Kid’s Hope Alliance and Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition’s Fatherhood P.R.I.D.E. It joins Hubbard House’s 26-year-old Men Against Violence Against Women program, which has been bringing men together for public awareness and volunteerism.
Not My City will collaborate with the existing efforts to add direct opportunities for discussion, education and peer connection specifically for men of all ages, Kovacocy said.
“We had done a good job of targeting the male audience, but we recently received a grant where we could further this initiative to get men involved as a target audience to really drive this program home to really make every relationship violence-free,” he said. “We wanted to have a holistic program, to hit all of the targets and foster a bottoms-up solution, so we are not only supporting victims and survivors of violence, but take that down to zero.”
To get men involved, Hubbard House will host a Male Engagement Meeting at 5:30 p.m. June 30 at Cox Media Group, 11700 Central Parkway. The free event will offer information about the role of men in violence prevention. Register at hubbardhouse.org/events.
The agency is also looking for fraternities, mentoring organizations, fathers groups or college clubs to host Not My City sessions. That is where Hubbard House staff can provide training or organize volunteer events.
“We are aiming this at all men, looking at positive role models. We are looking at fathers; we are looking at fraternity groups,” Kovacocy said. “We are just really trying to frame this issue into how to have our fathers, our parents really teach their children about safe boundaries, teach their sons about consent — safe avenues to release stress and negative attitudes. … We really want to just make Jacksonville better — make it violence-free.”
