How Community Shapes Character Development at Boys Home of Virginia
Why Brotherhood Is the Foundation of Life at Boys Home
At this year’s graduation, Executive Director Chris Doyle watched something that would shape the entire school year ahead. As graduates Logan, De’Leon, and Orien celebrated one another on stage, encouraging each other and standing together as brothers, Chris saw the clearest example yet of what actually sticks with students at Boys Home of Virginia.
It isn’t just the classroom lessons or the trade certificates, though those matter too. It’s the bonds.
That moment became the inspiration for this year’s school-wide theme: Built Through Brotherhood.
“Brotherhood is more than friendship, it is the foundation of our community,” Chris says.
It touches every part of student life, from the cottages and classrooms to athletics, chapel, clubs, and service. When young men learn to support, encourage, and hold one another accountable, they build the character, leadership, and resilience that carry them well beyond their time at Boys Home.
What the Research Says About Character Development in Boys
Brotherhood isn’t just a nice idea. It’s backed by real developmental science.
One widely cited example comes from a long-term study of the Boy Scouts of America, tracking boys over 30 months in a program built around structure, mentorship, and peer accountability, not unlike the daily rhythm at Boys Home.
Boys who stayed engaged in the program showed measurable increases in cheerfulness, helpfulness, kindness, obedience, and trustworthiness. Boys who weren’t engaged showed no meaningful growth at all. The takeaway is simple: character isn’t something boys develop in isolation. It grows through consistent relationships, shared responsibility, and belonging to something bigger than themselves.
That growth matters more than most people realize. Social psychology research suggests that as much as 82% of life success comes down to emotional skills and character, not raw intelligence or test scores.
For a school built around forming the whole young man, that statistic is close to a mission statement.
Brotherhood in Action, Every Day on the Hill
Donnie Costigan, Director of Recreation and Athletics and a Boys Home alumnus himself, sees this theme as more than a fit for the mission. He sees it as the mission, and for him, athletics is where it plays out most visibly.
“As iron sharpens iron, our young men sharpen one another,” Donnie says. “Through competition and community, they are challenged to become men of character, integrity, courage, humility, servanthood, and faith.”
On the field or on the court, students face moments that test more than their athletic skill.
“Athletics provides a unique opportunity to build these qualities,” Donnie explains. “Our young men learn how to respond to adversity, celebrate others, accept accountability, and persevere when things become difficult.” Those lessons, he says, extend far beyond the game itself. They help prepare students for life after Boys Home.
For Donnie, the scoreboard is almost beside the point. “At Boys Home, athletics is about more than keeping score. It is about building character,” he says. “It is about learning how to compete with intensity while treating others with respect, how to lead while remaining humble, and how to pursue excellence while serving those around you.”
That’s the real goal behind the theme, whether it’s called Built Through Brotherhood or Built Through Brotherhood and Athletics. As Donnie puts it, “The goal is not simply to build better athletes; it is to build better men.”
That commitment shows up in ways that are easy to overlook if you’re not looking closely.
It’s in the cottages, where students live alongside each other and learn to navigate the ordinary friction of shared life. It’s on the athletic fields, where a missed shot is met with encouragement rather than criticism. It’s in chapel and in service projects, where students are asked to think beyond their own needs.Jody Eggleston, who leads the Trades program and serves as Director of Facilities, sees the same principle at work through hands-on learning. “Every day, we have the privilege of helping young men grow in faith, character, and purpose through the work of their hands and the strength of brotherhood,” he says.
In the trades shop, that brotherhood looks like older students showing younger ones how to use a tool safely, or a group troubleshooting a project together instead of one student going it alone.
Why Community Matters for Boys Specifically
There’s a reason Boys Home leans so heavily on shared experience instead of individual achievement. A lot of the young men who come here have been through instability at home, and a strong community can be the thing that steadies them when nothing else has. Not a bonus, but often the missing piece.
You can see it most clearly in the students who struggle to talk one-on-one. Put that same kid on a team, in a cottage, on a sports roster, in the trades shop working alongside a crew, or a community project that benefits someone else, and something shifts. He’s not being asked to open up. He’s being asked to show up for someone else. And more often than not, that’s when the real growth starts.
Brotherhood as a Lifelong Foundation
The hope behind Built Through Brotherhood is that students carry this lesson with them long after they leave the Hill.
As Donnie puts it, “As iron sharpens iron, the students grow into men of character, integrity, courage, and faith. United by a common purpose, no one succeeds alone.”
This is at the heart of what Boys Home of Virginia strives to do: build young men who know how to support others and who know they don’t have to carry their burdens alone.
While the community changes with each new class of students, the principle remains the same. Brotherhood isn’t something that happens magically, but it’s built, together, every single day.
Want to learn more about the community and character-building programs at Boys Home of Virginia? Contact us to find out how brotherhood shapes life on the Hill.