This approach is the most effective in cases where men have been involved in all 24 weeks of the program. The Emerge Collective formed in 1977 when a group of eight men in Boston joined together at the request of women working in shelters for battered women. At that time, the shelter workers felt that they had no place to send a man who wanted to change his violent behavior. The workers also wanted to concentrate their own energies on providing emergency services and support for women. Emerge organized as a collective in order to deal directly with the competition and hierarchy and by providing a model to help other men evaluate their own relationships with authority. Emerge provides both counseling and community education to deal with the three basic conditions that lead directly to abuse: the beliefs that it is permissible to dominate women, that it is permissible to use violence to solve problems, and that it is permissible to beat a woman. During the course of the counseling, the group members become more interactive and self-helping, while the counselors become less intervening and directive. Both this counseling and community education are needed, because success in ending the abuse of women will ultimately hinge on a reduction in the societal tolerance of abuse through a change in community attitudes. Case examples and a list of eight references are provided.