2008 Capacity-Building Awardees

NFI is pleased to announce the 2008 Capacity-Building Awardees. To view information about each awardee, click on the link below.

Awardee Narratives

Abbeville County First Steps
Abbeville, SC

The Real Fathers are Dads program mission is to equip, and educate, then empower fathers with the necessary tools to engage positively in their children's quest to be successful. Abbeville County First Steps' fatherhood initiative is designed to target fathers prenatal to five years old. We offer evening workshops twice a month, and recruit participants and community speakers for the program, as well as, foster community involvement. The workshop topics will range from budgeting/financial management, self-esteem and responsibility, to parenting and life skills. Once a core group of fathers is formed, the coordinator will have activities for the fathers and children to do together, such as going to a sports event, community activities, or going on a picnic together on the weekends. There will also be outdoor activities just for dads, to create team building skills. Books will be given to all the children in the program, and literacy will be promoted in all sessions with the fathers, with an emphasis of the importance of their role in their child's lives. Also, fathers will be encouraged to attend the monthly Parents As Teachers meetings with the mothers in the program. The target audience will be families enrolled in the Parents As Teachers Program, and referrals from other agencies such as the unemployment office, the family court system, DSS, the school district's family literacy program, Cornerstone, and the housing authority.

Alliance for Families and Children | Back to Top |
Lynchburg, VA

The Alliance for Families and Children was founded in 1909 to improve the lives of families throughout the Central Virginia region. We offer 11 comprehensive and diverse programs to assist families in overcoming challenges, making responsible choices, and improving their quality of life through better employment, parenting skills and so much more!

Over 17, 000 individuals served last year
$2 million operating budget
34 Full-time employees
Serving the cities of Lynchburg and Bedford, and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell

Bedford-Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center | Back to Top |
Brooklyn, NY

The Bedford-Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center's Fatherhood Initiative was created in order to promote responsible fatherhood within our Head Start families and throughout our community. Our Fatherhood Initiative is a partnership of fathers, grandfathers, uncles, nephews, cousins, guardians, and other concerned individuals who have joined forces to address the social, psychological and physiological issues which either aid or hinder the connection between men, their children, their families and the community at large.

Our Fatherhood Initiative team is a highly qualified and motivated group of professionals, community residents, Head Start Staff and volunteers dedicated to the implementation of the programs and mechanisms which allow us to pursue our mission and realize our goals.

Bethesda Family Services Foundation | Back to Top |
Lewisburg, PA

Bethesda Family Services Foundation is "committed to healing hearts and changing lives" by reconciling relational conflict through the provision of faith-based programs, services and training. In an effort to achieve our mission, we work to replicate our programs by establishing Bethesda affiliates and disseminating our treatment methods to other program providers. A major emphasis is placed on providing these services to incarcerated fathers. Founded in 1995 by President Dominic Herbst, the nonprofit agency focuses on youth and family treatment and offender rehabilitation. Lead by Herbst and Executive Director Max Harrison, the agency has grown and achieved a number of successes. The Bethesda Model has been featured on four national television documentaries, has won a number of awards and has been included in several national publications. Currently being utilized in 13 states across the country, the Bethesda programs are touching over 16,000 lives per year. Regarded as a "national model" and "promising program" by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Model has also been adopted for use by the Player Development staff of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Our goals include further developing our in-prison programs and providing services to parolees.

It is our belief that a fatherhood program, if it is to be effective, must contain elements of family engagement and connection. Bethesda is committed to addressing the relational needs of troubled individuals and families throughout our nation. Our background and experience with inmates and families has proven to be life changing for many individuals served. Upon completion of the program, it is expected that each individual will have achieved and/or be working towards relational and emotional healing, thereby allowing him to be better adept in parenting his own children.

Through Bethesda's "Four Steps to Emotional Healing," families (even if all parties are not present) are carefully lead down the road to victory and restoration. This methodology has been successful with thousands of families by focusing on the root causes of conflict. It is a process that requires written assignments from the participants, "bleeding" the rage from one's emotions by leading him through the proper steps of admission and grieving. The results reveal significant decreases in the frequency and intensity of the offending patterns, which is the primary desired outcome.

For more information, please contact us at:
Bethesda Family Services Foundation
88 Bull Run Crossing, Suite One
Lewisburg, PA 17837
570-523-0605
staff@bfsf.org
www.bfsf.org

Cambodian Association of America | Back to Top |
Long Beach, CA

The Cambodian Association of America is a non-profit organization with the mission to improve the quality of life of low-income children and families in our community by providing linguistically and culturally appropriate social, health, outreach education and employment services. The major programs currently operated by CAA demonstrate that our understanding of the complex issues that impact the health and well-being of underserved communities and our ability to address these issues.

Among our many programs, CAA currently offers a Marriage Enrichment Program, designed to provide education and skills training to couples and individuals in the community. A Fatherhood Program is currently being developed to complement the services offered through this and other CAA programs. The Fatherhood Program aims to educate and support fathers who are interested in improving their roles as fathers, through group sessions, case management, and other support services. While any father is eligible to participate, the program seeks to involve Cambodian and Southeast Asian fathers, who may not have a high level of involvement in their child's life. The Responsible Fatherhood Capacity Building Grant will support the development and implementation of this new program.

The Center for Working Families | Back to Top |
Atlanta, GA

The Center for Working Families, Inc. (TCWFI) works to provide a combination of job placement assistance, job development and asset-building programs to meet the needs of families in the six neighborhoods clustered around Atlanta's Turner Field (also known as Neighborhood Planning Unit V or NPU-V). Launched in the fall of 2005, TCWFI is designed to bundle these services in a family-friendly way through intensive pathway coaching and tailored classes, and by linking multiple service providers in partnership around residents.

The Center for Working Families Program (CWF) includes three strategies. Its Moving to Work Pathway helps unemployed and underemployed residents secure and maintain jobs that offer family supporting wages and benefits. Its Moving to Wealth Pathway helps employed residents build savings and assets and its Fatherhood Initiative provides intensive mentoring and coaching to reconnect fathers to their families and community. All strategies work toward linking CWF participants to the full array of TCWFI programs and services designed to increase income, employment, and assets.

Charles P. Foster Foundation | Back to Top |
San Leandro, CA

The work of the Charles P. Foster Foundation is to assist African American youth, their parents and family members in leading meaningful, positive, successful lives thus becoming productive citizens of society. This goal will be achieved through the implementation of mandatory educational, economic, social and professional development services and trainings.

As a result of the National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity Building Initiative and with help from the National Fatherhood Initiative and the expertise provided at 2 Certification College trainings, the Charles P. Foster Foundation has been able to expand its capacity upgrade our skill level regarding our programs, increase our visibly in the community, create a prison reentry model for inmates from San Quentin State Prison, with a special emphasis on assisting low-income non-custodial fathers. CPF Foundation was able to have several productive community mobilization meetings regarding fatherhood, role models and father figures, and conducted an initial development feasibility study on an upcoming development program.

Christian Heritage | Back to Top |
Walton, NE

Christian Heritage is a non-profit, faith-based organization founded in 1980 to serve Nebraska's abused and neglected children placed out-of-home by the Department of Health and Human Services. Residential homes, foster homes and transitional living apartments are being used to serve over 110 children daily. After nearly 30 years of caring for at risk children we have come to the conclusion that fatherlessness is the #1 contributing factor to children being placed in the foster care system. Consequently in 2007 we launched a fatherhood initiative. We host a Celebration of Fatherhood luncheon and acknowledge a Nebraska Father of the Year, the week before Father's Day. We have created an in-house radio production studio and are producing programs for Furthering the Family, a state-wide radio outreach to encourage Dads to be involved in the lives of their children and to help strengthen and support marriages. We are launching a new Family Coaching Program to engage dads with their families. Our two specific goals are to reunify families in those situations where children have been placed away from home and secondly, prevent out-of-home placement of children considered at risk. We are absolutely convinced the vast majority of fathers are unaware of the significant influence they have on the lives of their children, and especially their teenage children. We are committed to conveying the importance of the role of fathers and providing dads with the encouragement and tools necessary to be successful in raising their children.

The Committee for Hispanic Children and Youth | Back to Top |
New York, NY

No information currently available.

Elizabeth New Life Center | Back to Top |
Dayton, OH

Elizabeth's New Life Center (ENLC) is a 501c3 faith-based non-profit network of five pregnancy resource centers, a prenatal care center, an abstinence education department and a marriage support center headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. Elizabeth's New Life Center was founded in 1989 to offer women in crisis pregnancies the assistance/education needed to enable them to choose life. Its mission is "to empower individuals to make healthy life choices respecting the value of each person created by God." Over the past 19 years Elizabeth's New Life Center has served thousands of at-risk families through wrap-around services, including providing free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD testing, pregnancy consultation, mentoring, education in life skills and material assistance through its women's centers. Holy Family Prenatal Care, an LLC wholly owned by ENLC, provides excellent and comprehensive prenatal care until birth and throughout the postpartum period, primarily to a low-income population. Our education department teaches abstinence until marriage to 25,000+ middle and high school students in a six-county region, and our marriage support center, Marriage Works! Ohio, utilizes educational classes and opportunities to teach relationship skills and enrich marriages.

Family and Children's Council of Black Hawk County | Back to Top |
Waterloo, IA

Family & Children's Council is a child abuse prevention agency that was established in 1980. The mission of the agency is to prevent child abuse and strengthen families, and through 13 programs and services the agency provides child sexual abuse prevention programs, parenting classes, one-on-one support and parenting mentoring, and education to professionals and the community at large.

In 2003 Family & Children's Council began seeing more and more fathers seeking parenting services. Through a grant from the With Arms Wide Open Foundation, the agency began a single father's support group. Five years later, the agency supports many services available for young men and fathers through the Empowering Dads program. Services include support and education for teen fathers, fathers with young children, non-residential fathers, information on child support, access and visitation, and a prison reentry program.

Families First | Back to Top |
Missoula, MT

Families First is a non-profit organization committed to the wellbeing of families of all backgrounds and life circumstances. We provide learning through play, parent support and accompaniment through loss and transition through our three programs: Children's Museum Missoula, Parenting Programs and Seasons Bereavement Programs. We are not affiliated with any religious or political affiliation. Families First is funded by private foundations, corporate sponsors, grants, donations and program income.

The National Responsible Fatherhood grant has given Families First the opportunity to establish a leadership role in the community and to better assess and understand the needs and wants of fathers in our community. During the grant cycle, we will build collaborations with local organizations to broaden the scope of services available to fathers. Through a fatherhood summit, we will help our community to better understand the crucial role fathers play in the lives of their children. Other key program objectives include improving our capacity to more efficiently market to fathers, as well as increasing fatherhood programming.

Family Life Council | Back to Top |
Greensboro, NC

The Family Life Council is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization focused on providing family life and parent education since 1968. The Family Life Council provides accessible, high quality and diverse programs, resources, and advocacy for families, educators and community agencies.

Fathers Matter, a program of the Family Life Council, was established in 1997 in order to effectively and specifically provide education and support to fathers. The Family Life Council recognized the important and unique role of fathers. Since that time, thousands of men have participated in multi-session educational programs specifically designed to address fathering.

The Capacity Building Grant from the National Fatherhood Initiative will allow us to expand the visibility and reach for our fatherhood programs. The highlights of the Family Life Council's plan are to host a Fatherhood Summit and create a county-wide Fatherhood Coalition.

Hillcrest Family Ministries | Back to Top |
Abilene, TX

In today's' world, the family is bombarded by the media and outside forces that can easily tear it apart if the proper boundaries are not set. Many marriages are being lost because of the culture attempting to redefine marriage, as well as families being lost in the shuffle because of the portrayals of fathers who are weak minded or absent.

The vision of Hillcrest Family Ministries is to "set guard rails for life," where we create proactive learning opportunities for strengthening the bonds of family, and specifically fathers. We want to create the proper boundaries in every aspect of family that will keep their family strong and from going over the "proverbial cliff." Our mission is accomplished specifically through:

F-FEEDING THE FLOCK IN GOD'S VIEW OF THE FAMILY
A-AFFIRMING HEALTHY FAMILIES IN THEIR HEALTHINESS
M-MEMBER INVOLVEMENT IN MINISTRY
I-IMPROVING COMMUNICATION IN FAMILIES
L-LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Y-YOUNG/OLD INTERACTION (INTERGENERATIONAL ACTIVITIES)

It is our hope that through these goals, we will be able to help families from falling into chaos, rather than trying to put the pieces back together at the bottom and hope they all fit. In the culture we have today, we need to take a more proactive stance against the forces that are tearing families apart, and use the media to our advantage and create a counter culture that portrays families (and specifically fathers) in a positive light.

Inwood House | Back to Top |
Bronx, NY

A leader and innovator in teen pregnancy prevention, youth development and family support, Inwood House is dedicated to helping teens take charge of their lives and become healthy and self-reliant adults.

Inwood House was established as a Residence in 1830 to help delinquent girls in New York City rebuild their lives. Many were immigrants without families and were sexually exploited. Inwood House provided them a safe home and supportive community, education and employable skills. Today the Residence cares for homeless, pregnant teens in foster care, and Inwood House is internationally recognized as a leader and innovator in youth development, teen pregnancy prevention, and family support serving nearly 5,000 young people in New York City and New Jersey.

Inwood House was one of the first to recognize the young unwed father as a potential resource for the family and launched the 1990's with Fathers Count, a program to help them take on their share of parental responsibilities. We expanded our community-based services to the South Bronx with Teen Family Services, which links teen mothers to vital services such as health care, child care, educational and job opportunities. We initiated Boys to Men, our South Bronx intervention program to keep boys safe from the streets, focused on school and planning for future.

Male Empowerment Network | Back to Top |
Gary, IN

The Male Empowerment Network Inc. (M.E.N. Inc) is a 501(c) (3), not-for-profit organization, established in December 2005 and based in Gary, Indiana. Our mission is: "To provide services that uplift the status of men." M.E.N. Inc is a grass-rooted, community based organization whose members seek to educate, equip, and edify the men of our city using the direct-service approach. Our program targets single, divorced and married men, ages 18-65, men with diverse socioeconomic status. M.E.N. Inc is striving toward reversing those misconceptions that society has placed men in: i.e. deadbeat dads, and no-good fathers. In order to change this, we are challenging males to seek help and understanding their role as men and fathers. We believe statistics related to poverty, unemployment and illiteracy can be changed when men begin to assume their proper role within the family.

M.E.N. Inc seeks to become a major advocate for issues impacting the lives of men. One of our goals is to become a community leader with regard to the rights of men. Our programs attempt to educate and equip every man with a foundation, which he can build upon to become an acceptable, responsible and productive member of our society. As a not-for-profit 501(c) (3) organization, our business is to improve the state of affairs concerning the males of our community. We seek to not only educate men about their role as fathers, but to also assist those men in becoming involved in their communities.

Maui Family Services | Back to Top |
Wailuku, HI

Maui Family Support Services, Inc. (MFSS) has provided family strengthening services to our Maui County community for over 28 years and is seen as a leader in child development services supporting several hundred families a year. The mission is "to promote healthy family functioning by providing supportive services which build on family strengths." The Prime Directive is to prevent child abuse and neglect.

All MFSS services are designed to provide optimal environments for children, to strengthen families and to promote self-sufficiency, including economic stability. MFSS team members work with families to ensure a healthy environment to avoid child maltreatment and to promote positive health and educational outcomes for their child(ren). This includes services which promote healthy relationships between parents, both during prenatal stages and after the child is born.

The Fatherhood Involvement Team (FIT) provides services targeted at male caregivers (including prenatal) and focuses on the importance of positive male involvement and supporting services to fathers another male caregivers. Services include "talk-story" (support) and educational groups using the 24/7 Dad © and other father specific curricula. Services are provided in the home; at parks, beaches, or community centers; for dads at the hospital within 36 hours of a child's birth; in shelters, high schools, residential treatment programs; and in partnership with other community supports and services. Services are provided at various times to accommodate work schedules. MFSS also offers a 24-hour "dad's hotline" to provide support and information to fathers. In addition to ongoing services and activities, MFSS hosts an annual Celebration of Fathers, a multi-island, community event that provides a fun-filled, educational, and community supported day for fathers and other male caregivers and their children. Services are offered day, evenings and weekends to meet the diverse schedules of dads in our community. Peer leadership and leadership development are encouraged and supported.

Father's volunteer in the Child Development Center, assist with agency projects, and are encouraged to participate in activities which highlight the importance and benefits of positive father involvement. The FIT team, as well as all agency staff, receive ongoing training and talk with families to design and evaluate services and environments to ensure they are "father friendly".

In addition to FIT, the following MFSS services are available to support responsible fatherhood, and to support for fathers and other male caregivers:

Early Identification Team - hospital-based component operates 365 days a year, includes face-to-face screening and assessment interview in the hospital to determine eligibility for MFSS programs. Prenatal participants are admtted through medical, community and self referrals.
Healthy Start Home Visiting - helps families with children 0-3 identify their strengths, focus on enhancing parenting skills, promote positive bonding and attachment, healthy child development and to enhance family functioning
Enhanced Healthy Start - nurse, family violence and Mental Health services to families involved with Child Welfare Services
Child Development Specialists (CDS) - CDS focus on the importance of parents as their child's first teachers, parent-child interaction, early childhood development, school readiness
Early Head Start - Early childhood program serving low income families with children up to 3 years old on Maui. Includes a home-visiting option and state licensed Center for infants and toddlers
Teen Services-provides support groups for pregnant teen moms and expectant dads, as well as extensive outreach and services to prevent teen pregnancies
Raising Our Keiki's Keiki (ROKK) - Provides support and information group for grandparents raising their grandchildren
The S.P.O.T - Services to Parents Of Twins and other multiple births.

National Family Life and Education Center | Back to Top |
Culver City, CA

National Family Life and Education Center (NFLEC) is a non-profit social service agency, providing services for at-risk youth and families throughout Los Angeles County and the nation. The cornerstone program of NFLEC is our Ten Step Rites of Passage program which has been implemented and shared in more than 3 countries, 35 states, and 100 cities. The Ten Step Rites of Passage Model has been recognized by the White House as one of America's most promising models in working with at-risk families. NFLEC provides training for community and faith-based organizations to incorporate the Ten Step Rites of Passage model into their service delivery plan. The Ten Step Rites of Passage model is currently being implemented in: schools, churches, substance abuse programs, re-entry programs, pre-release programs, incarcerated fathers, marriage programs, abstinence programs, probation and first-time offender groups, employment training programs, and much more.

National Family Life and Education Center also provides quality social services within Los Angeles County. Presently, NFLEC offers: Transitional Housing for foster youth as a pre-emancipation supportive service; Job Readiness Workshops and Training; Fatherhood Services; Marriage and Family Counseling and Workshops, School-based Prevention programming, and our Rites of Passage Program. Presently, NFLEC is planning to establish a Charter School for boys, and we are expanding our services for fathers and marriage.

Oregon Child Development Coalition | Back to Top |
Wilsonville, OR

The Oregon Child Development Coalition, OCDC, serves low-income families in Oregon and has grown to be the largest early childhood care and education network in the state. The nonprofit organization serves more than 3,500 multi-lingual (mostly Spanish speaking) children and their families every year with Head Start, early childhood education programs, a meals program, and wrap-around childcare, among other services. In 1971 OCDC started cultivating the future of Oregon's children by offering essential services to families of migrant, seasonal and agricultural workers. Today, OCDC practices inclusiveness by preparing all children for school, promoting economic opportunities for their families, and partnering with service providers in 12 Oregon counties. As the largest child development and childcare network in Oregon, OCDC provides services to families with children ages 6 and younger.

Pregnancy Care Center | Back to Top |
Springfield, MO

The Pregnancy Care Center (PCC) is a non-profit, life-affirming organization that is dedicated to supporting a healthier and happier family unit. With locations in Springfield and Aurora, Missouri, PCC specializes in providing health and wellness education to families in the Ozarks, delivering vital services to over 1,700 men and women each year that are facing an unplanned pregnancy. These services include pregnancy testing, sonograms, healthy pregnancy classes and healthy-relationship education. Additionally, the PCC Choices Project offers relationship and abstinence-until-marriage programs to over 21,000 students each year in our local schools.

Fatherhood 3.6.5 is a relatively new program at PCC that is already showing substantial growth and strong interest from the fathers helped through our services. The core mission of this program is to:

Encourage fathers to become authentic men through genuineness and affirmation
Equip fathers to achieve personal success through the use of multiple resources
Empower men to build strong relationships as fathers, husbands and boyfriends through relationship education

PCC works to accomplish this mission through one-on-one mentoring as well as 24/7 Dad™ classes. Male volunteers, who are dedicated to walking expectant fathers through the pregnancy and childbirth experience, help each dad learn how to care for his partner and their baby. Using an "Earn While You Learn" credit system, each father can take pride in providing for his family.

Roca, Inc | Back to Top |
Chelsea, MA

Roca means rock in Spanish. We are creating a foundation as solid as a rock for young people to change their lives through truth, trust and transformation. It starts with being truthful about everything: what is going on with young people, the challenges in their lives, the realities of their communities, that change is hard but possible, and what we can and can't do for them. Then we build trust through long-term relationships and stay in them with young people, and the adults and institutions in their lives. Transformation comes through participation in life skills, education and employment. We are hopeful no matter what and believe that as long as people are alive, everything is possible. Our vision is clear. Young people will leave the streets and gangs to take responsibility for their actions and have jobs. Young immigrant mothers will raise their children in safety and contribute to society. Our communities will have the ability to keep young people out of harm's way and in turn, thrive through their participation and leadership.

Founded in 1988, Roca is a vision and values-led organization committed to serving the most disenfranchised and disengaged young people ages 14-24 (street/court/gang involved; drop-outs; young parents; and refugee and immigrants) in Greater Boston including the communities of Chelsea, Revere, East Boston, and Charlestown, MA. Roca's purpose is to relentlessly build relationships with high-risk young people, and the major institutions in their lives (criminal justice, child welfare, education, health, etc.), in order to support their transformation to live out of harm's way and put them on a path of economic independence. Through intensive relationship building, Roca helps young people re-engage in society - moving them into educational, employment, and life skills programming and providing them with the opportunities necessary to live and succeed. www.rocainc.org

Urban League of Broward County | Back to Top |
Ft. Lauderdale, FL

The Urban League of Broward County (ULBC) is a community based, not for profit organization with a mission to promote economic and social equality for African Americans and other disenfranchised groups. As an affiliate of the National Urban League, the nation's oldest and largest community based movement devoted to Empowering African Americans, the Urban League provides an array of programs for youth and adults from a holistic perspective. The goals of the organization are to act as a catalyst for change and leadership with a social entrepreneurial spirit in Broward County through innovative educational, social, and economic programming, research and advocacy, and partnership building.

The Urban League of Broward County through the award from the National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity Building Initiative will have the ability to provide education and support to enhance the capability of African American Fathers and/or Males to provide healthy, nurturing and stable environments for themselves, their children and families with the ultimate goal of improving their communities.

The Urban League of Broward will be an agent of change for the negative perception which is placed on African American males and/or fathers by equipping them with the knowledge base needed to responsibly father their children by building our capacity to educate and train staff and community on Responsible Fathering Issues; provide preventive education to the young men in our programs by advocating for the delay of fatherhood until they are academically, financially, emotionally and socially prepared to be fathers; impart positive recognition and reinforcement to fathers involved with our programs and direct and asset available community services then connect African American fathers to resources needed to cultivate their fathering skills.

Vincent Family Services | Back to Top |
Milwaukee, WI

Under the auspices of St. Vincent de Paul Society (SVDP), The Vincent Family Resource Center provides comprehensive family strengthening services. We have been in existence over 12 years and began serving fathers in 2003 with a grant from the Wisconsin Children's Trust Fund (WCTF). Being a recipient of the WCTF grant allowed our agency to begin the Fatherhood services by offering a Nurturing Fathers Program. We continue to build capacity in this area by offering a regular father/child interactive service we call Glad with Dad. Glad with Dad encourages the fathers, with input from their children to plan a family event they implement and attend together. Currently and most immediately the FRC is specifically seeking fathers from the program, community, SVDP and the business community to form, develop, facilitate and be an active member of the new Fatherhood advisory board.

With the funds and resources from the National Fatherhood Initiative Capacity Building Grant, the VFRC is able to build upon the needs of the many families we serve. This grant has allowed the VFRC to strengthen our organization and enhance the quality of our programs by: supplying resources and services to increase the number of fathers we serve, encourage and mobilize community leadership, to raise funds, and to promote community change for responsible fathers. The Technical assistance has been essential in the area of receiving curricula and formal training in especially leadership development, organizational development and making better community connections.

Vineyard Family Services | Back to Top |
Birmingham, AL

Vineyard Family Services of Central Alabama, Inc. (VFS)-a faith-based organization, began out of the Inverness Vineyard Church (IVC) in the summer of 2006. VFS is located in Birmingham, Alabama; where close to 1/3 of children will grow up in a household that does not include a father (Alabama DHR). In accordance with our mission, "to address the underlying needs that exist in broken and fatherless families by providing programs to strengthen families, support parents and nontraditional caretakers in strength-based, goal-directed parenting, and to empower youth and children to make healthy life decisions," we currently offer our F.I.T. (Fatherhood Initiative Training) Dad Program. The F.I.T. DAD Program provides a weekly fathering class (Quenching the Father Thirst curriculum), individual case management services, employment referral and services (i.e. job readiness and development), GED preparation, domestic violence education and referral, substance abuse referral, physical rehabilitation referral and child support education. All of these services are provided to serve the father in a holistic manner for the purposes of decreasing the Functional Father Absence syndrome (i.e. an immature or impaired man who is unable or unwilling to develop or support his child's physical, emotional, social and moral primary life needs) while increasing child support payments and compliance.

Through the capacity building grant awarded, VFS will utilize the materials and services provided by NFI to strategically build its board of directors and effectively engage the community around issues relevant to fathers.

View more Resources...

Capacity-Building News and Announcements

2008 Capacity-Building Awardees

Awardee Narratives

View more Resources...

Read more news, press releases...

Responsible Fatherhood & Healthy Marriage Grants