Grant Announcements/ Daddies do Matter - 10/06

Mon Oct 2 17:27:20 EDT 2006

- AWARDS 
- FROM INMATE TO MENTOR; THROUGH POWER OF BOOKS
- DADDIES DO MATTER - FROM THE ARCHIVE:

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- AWARDS 
I heard late today, Monday 10/2, that the Marriage and Fatherhood awards
will NOT be officially announced/posted on the ACF website "for several
days".  In the meantime, please don't contact me.  I promise that I have no
inside info.  I will post the notice to the you the minute I find out that
the announcement is available at ACF. But I'll probably find out by checking
every hour, which you can also do:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/index.html.  - diane

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- FROM INMATE TO MENTOR; THROUGH POWER OF BOOKS

You cannot read this excellent article on the front page of today's
Washington Post and not flash back to Rozario Slack holding his son's face
in his hands at the keynote "Message to our Sons".  Dwayne, the boy
featured, grew up without his father, but, also, as he puts it, it was only
in prison that "he had his first serious conversation with a black man older
than 35." 

I don't know how many of you saw 60 Minutes last night. I found it almost
impossible to watch the last section on the new national trend - the new
teen "sport" of beating up and killing homeless men.  We can and we must do
better than this.  Father's do matter and the surest way to keep them in the
lives of their sons is through marriage. We must rebuild marriage in our
communities. Reminds me of that 1999 piece on 60 Minutes about the
elephants.  I'll paste it in below.  - diane

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- From Inmate to Mentor, Through Power of Books
Washington Post - front page, A01
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 2, 2006

The young black guys, in baseball caps and shorts, striped polos and slouchy
pants, sit in a circle. They have "Letters to a Young Brother" by Hill
Harper open on their laps, but the conversation has strayed from book talk
to boy talk -- hip-hop, sports, school.

"When I asked, 'Why is everybody white, except the janitors are black?' the
teacher sent me to the office," complains 12-year-old Kyle Turner of
Columbia, and there are nods and murmurs of assent.

Teachers have it in for us.

"That's rare," counters group leader Reginald "Dwayne" Betts of Clinton.
With cocoa skin and a head full of twists, he looks like one of the
teenagers, but he's 25. "The thing I'm trying to get us to address is:
Sometimes when we've got problems with teachers and people in our lives,
sometimes the problem is not with them, it's with us."

He offers his life as parable.

"I had a teacher who honestly, legitimately didn't like me," Betts says.
"But I legitimately, honestly was not a likable person."

The boys, ages 11 to 16, nod as they let his words settle around their
heads.

In February, nearly a year after he got out of prison, Betts started the
YoungMenRead book club at Karibu Books in Bowie because he loves to read.
Because he wanted to create a place where it was cool for black boys to hang
out, speak up and be smart -- a place he says he never had.

Betts was a 16-year-old honors student and class treasurer at Suitland High
School when he carjacked somebody, was charged as an adult and spent more
than eight years in prison. He wasn't that bad, he says. He just drifted a
bad way, and there simply weren't enough safety nets to head him off -- not
enough teachers or organizations, mentors or black men. . . .

. . . .Betts's parents separated when he was a toddler, and he grew up with
his mother, a resource specialist with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. .
. . 
. . . [his mother] had to work, and he was home alone a lot. She didn't
date, so he had few adult men in his life.

In his first two years in prison, Betts spent nearly a year in isolation for
twice assaulting a guard. He saw a guy who'd been beaten to death. He saw
people get stabbed. He was scared all the time.. . . .

He made friends -- . . .. He had his first serious conversation with a black
man older than 35. 

To read the full article, with photos, visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/01/AR2006100101
160.html

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- DADDIES DO MATTER - FROM THE ARCHIVE:
>> Daddies do matter:
>> Last night (1/20/99) 60 Minutes featured a show about elephants.
>> 
>> Several decades ago there was a problem with overpopulation
>> on an African game preserve - too many elephants. Limited by the technology
>> available at the time, the solution arrived at was to move the babies to new
>> preserves.
>> Everyone watched, gravely concerned, but the babies thrived.
>> 
>> However, unintended consequences emerged.  At the new locations, a decade
>> or so after the transfer, someone was killing off rhinoceros which are an
>> endangered species.
>> It turned out the killers were young male elephants.  At first the game
>> wardens
>> couldn't believe it, this was uncharacteristic behavior never before seen in
>> elephants.
>> 
>> They deduced that the young males had grown up without fathers - without
>> male role models.  New technology had made it possible to transport into
>> these
>> locations some large mature bull elephants.  There was concern that it would
>> be too late, that
>> the adolescent males had to have grown up with their elders, that
>> bringing "daddies" in now would do no good. But they tried it anyway.
>> 
>> It worked like a charm.  The mature bulls arrived and set things
>> straight. The young males immediately stopped their precocious, rampant
>> sexuality,
>> killing and violence.
>> 
>> The conclusion drawn on 60 Minutes was that we had no idea that the social
>> system of
>> the elephants was so complex, interconnected, and so elegant.
>> And so it goes. Daddies do matter, even in elephants.
>> Diane Sollee, www.smartmarriages.com

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