Nobody teaches this anymore.
How to work. How money works. How to settle a conflict, cook a meal, give a real handshake. That used to come from a father, an uncle, a coach. A lot of boys don’t have that man nearby.
A free app from Boys2Men
Life skills for boys 11 to 18, led by the adults who love them.
FORGED is a free app from Boys2Men. Short lessons that play like games, real-world challenges a parent signs off on, and a clear path from boy to man. Launching January 1, 2027.
Launches in
–days
–hrs
–min
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- Free for every family
- Set up by a parent or mentor
- No ads, ever
The problem
The things a boy needs to know have stopped getting passed down.
Screens fill the gap.
When no one is teaching him, his feed will. The loudest voice wins his attention, and it rarely knows his name or cares how he turns out.
Parents want to help, but don’t have a plan.
You love him and you want to teach him. But what should he know by 18, in what order, and how do you know it stuck?
Nobody told him.
How to look a man in the eye. How credit works. That a teacher who stops getting effort stops giving it back. That the crowd he runs with decides who he becomes.
Photo: a Boys2Men mentor and a boy in Berea, Ohio.
The solution
FORGED turns everything a boy should know by 18 into a path he can follow, with you beside him.
See how it worksHow it works
Three steps from first lesson to real life.
It’s not an app a boy downloads and does alone. You set the course, he does the work, and real life proves it.
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01
You set it up.
A parent, guardian or mentor creates his account, picks his reading level, and chooses what he works on first.
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02
He plays the lessons.
Two to four minutes each, with choices and consequences. He passes the quiz, or he tries again.
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03
Real life signs off.
He cooks the meal or opens the savings account. You confirm it happened, and only then does it count.
Inside the app
Five tools that turn knowing into doing.
Here is what he sees on his phone, and what you see on yours. Screens show sample data.
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01 · Lessons
Lessons that play like games.
Two to four minutes each. He picks a path, sees what it costs him, and passes the quiz or tries again. No lectures and no long videos.
- About 480 lessons across 11 areas of life
- Written three ways for three reading levels
- Every lesson ends with something to do
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02 · Rhythms
Daily habits that keep his fire lit.
Every goal gets a rhythm: something he does on a schedule to reach it. One tap checks it off. Keep it going and his streak, his “fire,” grows. Miss a day and he sees it.
- Goals like “save $500” or “keep my word”
- Rest days he chooses don’t break the fire
- Lessons turn into rhythms with one tap
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03 · Real life, signed off
It counts when you say it counts.
Lessons come with field assignments: cook the eggs, open the account, shake the hand. He marks it done, and a parent or mentor confirms it really happened.
- You approve his goals and sign off his tasks
- An optional allowance that you control
- Assign a lesson, or skip what he already knows
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04 · The Furnace
An honest daily check-in that pays for honesty.
Life happens, and he puts it in the Furnace: “Coach yelled at me, and I stayed.” It sorts that moment into what he learned and what to practice next. A boy who writes “I blew up and it was my fault” earns as much as one who handled it perfectly.
- It is not a chatbot. No AI-written words ever come back to him
- His words stay private, even from you. You see his results
- Off for ages 11 and 12 unless you turn it on
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05 · The Compass
A quarterly look at where he’s heading.
A room of sixth graders holds future soldiers, builders, founders and scholars. A few quick questions each quarter show which way he’s leaning: military, trades, college, business, ministry and more. It re-tunes his lessons and shows you how he’s changing over time.
- About ten minutes, in plain language
- Never a label, a diagnosis or a ranking
- It stays in the family
What he learns
Eleven areas of a man’s life, mapped from 11 to 18.
We started with one question: what does a boy need to know to be capable by 18? Then we mapped the answer, lesson by lesson.
- Lessons
- ~480
- Reading levels
- 3
- Ages
- 11–18
- Spiritualyour soul
Know what you live for and who you answer to.
- Characteryour word
Be a man people can count on.
- Mentalyour mind
Think clearly, learn anything, master your emotions.
- Physicalyour body
Keep your body clean, strong, safe and working.
- Relationalyour heart
Build relationships that lift you, and treat people right.
- Vocationalyour work
Find your path and become valuable.
- Financialyour money
Earn it, keep it, grow it, never be owned by debt.
- Capabilityyour hands
Take care of yourself and your home without calling for help.
- Civicyour community
Know your rights, your duties, and how the world is run.
- Digitalyour attention
Use the screen; don’t let it use you.
- Restorativeyour rest
Rest, play and create in ways that refill you.
- Your family decides
Faith lessons are the parent’s choice: Christian, secular, or off. Nobody is penalized either way.
Source: the FORGED curriculum map (Boys2Men, 2026), built on 13 years of mentoring boys in Berea, Ohio.
Earned, not given
Five stages from boy to man, and every one is earned.
FORGED is built like a game, because boys play games. There are no participation trophies. He can fail a quiz, break a streak, and try again.
The five stages are named for how raw metal becomes a tool. Every boy starts as ore: real potential, mixed in with rock. There’s no shame in it. That’s where everyone begins.
Ore
Raw potential. Everyone starts here.
Day oneIron
Pulled out of the rock. The basics are in: routines, and an honest look at himself.
500 XP + the foundationsForged
In the fire, on the anvil. Meeting real challenges and taking hits. The best place a young man can be.
The goal by 18Tempered
Strong without being brittle. Steady under pressure, over time.
Earned by proof, not pointsSharpened
Iron sharpens iron. Now he mentors the next boy.
A lifelong mark
Like sports, he won’t always win. That’s where he finds out what he’s made of, and it’s why the adults matter: they coach him through the losses and point the wins somewhere.
Who runs it
Built for the adults raising boys on purpose.
Every account is created by an adult, at every age. One adult can guide one boy, or fifty.
Parents and guardians
Create his account, set his reading level and faith setting, approve his goals, and sign off what he does in real life.
- Sign-offs
- Allowance
- Faith setting
Mentors and coaches
Guide the boys you already work with. Assign lessons, skip what they know, and see who is moving and who is stuck.
- Assign lessons
- Progress
Churches
Give your youth group a path between Sundays, with Christian values in plain language and the parents brought in.
- Launch kit
- Training
Schools and group homes
Use it in advisory, after school, or in a group home, where the adults in charge are the ones who sign off.
- Launch kit
- Training
Bring FORGED to your group Groups that sign up now join the pilot before January 1.
Safe by design
Parents in charge. Kids protected.
Every rule below is part of the design from day one, not a setting someone has to find.
Adults create every account.
At every age. A boy can’t sign himself up.
No ads. Nothing sold.
We never sell or share anything about a family. Only anonymous totals ever leave it.
No chatbot.
He can’t chat with the AI, and it never writes to him. People write every lesson.
The Furnace is private and protected.
His words are deleted once they’re sorted. You see his results, never what he wrote.
A safety protocol.
If something he writes suggests real danger, he gets help numbers right away and you get a calm heads-up to check in. It never quotes him.
Built in-houseNo outside developer
Built by Boys2Men
Thirteen years with real boys, built into one app.
For thirteen years, Boys2Men put good men in front of boys on Monday nights in Berea, Ohio. Those nights showed us what boys were missing, and what actually worked.
We built FORGED ourselves, so no donor dollar pays an outside developer. Your gift pays to keep boys safe, keep the lessons coming, and put FORGED in the hands of the adults who’ll use it.
- 2013Boys2Men founded by Chris Scott
- 501(c)(3)Nonprofit since 2015
- In-houseLed by Demetrious Reed, Director of FORGED & Technology
The road to a million
From one room in Berea to a million boys.
Not through ads. Through the people boys already trust: churches, schools, group homes and parents. One mentor can bring fifty boys.
- 202750,000
- 2028200,000
- 2029500,000
- 20301,000,000
Cumulative downloads. These are goals, not results, and we’ll publish the real numbers every spring.
Fund the launch
See what your gift does.
The app is free to every family. Gifts pay for what it takes to reach boys, keep them safe, and keep the lessons coming. The launch fund raises the first $50,000 by January 1, enough for nearly 4,000 boys.
$0raised of $50,000
serves for a year.
$12.94 per boy, per year
Boys2Men Inc is a 501(c)(3). Gifts are tax-deductible as allowed by law (EIN 47-3064258). Everyone who gives before January 1 is listed as a Founding Donor on launch day, with your permission.
Each dot is one boy, served for a year.
Where it goes
- $13One boy, one year
- $65Five boys
- $260A youth group of twenty
- $1,300A church or school of a hundred
- $13/moTwelve boys, every year you give
The math, in the open.
Cost to serve one boy for a year = everything it takes ÷ boys served. Real vendor prices, and our assumptions.
| Line | Year one 2027 | At a million 2030 |
|---|---|---|
| Boys served that year | 20,000 | 300,000 |
| Technology + AI servers, database, app stores, email, the Furnace | $11,824 | $137,408 |
| Security + child safety testing, reviews, monitoring | $12,000 | $30,000 |
| The lesson engine writing, review, filling gaps | $60,000 | $120,000 |
| Reaching families church, school and group-home launch kits, training | $60,000 | $250,000 |
| People + operations the team, accounting, insurance, filings | $110,000 | $350,000 |
| Measuring results | $5,000 | $20,000 |
| Everything it takes | $258,824 | $907,408 |
| Per boy, per year | $12.94 | $3.02 |
| What $1 buys | About 4 weeks of FORGED | About 4 months |
A million boys reached by 2030 means a million downloads. In any one year about 300,000 of them are active, and those are the boys the $3.02 serves.
Technology + AI, line by line, and what we assumed
- Database, sign-in, storage: Supabase ($25/mo Pro in 2027; $599/mo Team with SOC 2 at scale, plus usage).
- Hosting and delivery: Vercel Pro ($20 a seat) and Cloudflare R2 for lesson media ($0.015/GB, no transfer fees).
- App builds and updates: Expo EAS Production ($199/mo).
- Email and notifications: Resend ($35/mo, then $650/mo at a million). Push notifications are free.
- Monitoring and app stores: Sentry ($26/mo), Apple ($99/yr), Google ($25 once).
- The Furnace: Claude Haiku 4.5 at about 0.4¢ per entry, including a safety check, about 78 entries per boy per year.
- 40% of downloads active in year one, 30% at scale. Because an adult sets it up and assigns it, we expect FORGED to hold far better than a typical education app. We’ll measure it and publish the real number.
- About 1.5 Furnace entries per boy per week.
- Reaching families through partners at about $1.20 per download, against about $4.70 for a paid-ad install.
Vendor prices checked September 14, 2026: supabase.com, vercel.com, cloudflare.com, expo.dev, resend.com, firebase.google.com, sentry.io, developer.apple.com, play.google.com, anthropic.com. Security and install-cost ranges from published industry surveys.
Questions
Good questions, straight answers.
Something we didn’t cover? Call us at 440-532-1837 or send a message.
Is FORGED really free?
Yes, for every family, church, school and group home. Gifts cover what it costs to reach boys, keep them safe, and keep the lessons coming, so it never has to charge.
When can we start?
FORGED launches January 1, 2027. Churches, schools and groups can join the pilot before then: tell us about your group. You can try the demo today.
Can my son download it and use it alone?
No, on purpose. A parent, guardian or mentor creates the account and guides him. FORGED is built for the adults raising boys intentionally.
Is my son’s information safe?
Accounts are created by adults, there are no ads, and nothing about a family is ever sold or shared. His private Furnace entries stay private, even from you; you see his results.
Does it use AI?
Only behind the scenes, to sort what a boy puts in the Furnace into lessons and points. There’s no chatbot, and the AI never talks to him or writes to him.
Is it Christian?
It’s built by a Christian family, with Christian values in plain language throughout. Faith lessons are the parent’s choice: Christian, secular, or off.
How can it cost only about $13 a boy?
Technology is cheap once it’s built well: running the app for one boy costs about 59¢ a year. We build it ourselves, and we reach families through partners instead of ads. The math shows every line.