1,000,000 Dads for 2009 Father's Day Commitment / Baseball -4/17/09

Fri Apr 17 17:52:10 EDT 2009

- SEEKING A MILLION COMMITTED DADS
- TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

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- SEEKING A MILLION COMMITTED DADS

This Father's Day marks the 100th anniversary of the first observance of
Father's Day.  In recognition, a National Responsible Fatherhood Rally is
being planned for June 20 on the Mall in Washington DC when organizers are
asking dads to make a simple, 5 point commitment to their children.  The
goal is to get more than 1,000,000 dads across the country to make this
commitment prior to Father's Day, and then begin living it.  To accomplish
this goal, we need the help of every organization and individual working
with dads.  

I'm requesting your assistance in helping spread the word about the 2009
Father's Day Commitment, and a simple web-based widget we've developed to
empower others to help encourage dads to make their commitment.  This email
introduces the Commitment and the widget and suggests next steps:

The Commitment 
The first three of the five points are focused on a dad's relationship with
his own children. 

o Loving your Child - affirming and nurturing your child, loving and/or
respecting the child's mother.

o Coaching your Child - being involved in your child's life and knowing them
well 

o Modeling for your Child - consistently living the values you wish to pass
on to your children

Recognizing that there are 25 million children living without their dads who
would still benefit from the involvement of a father or father figure we
added a fourth point:

o Encouraging another Child - reaching out to a child in your sphere of
influence and getting involved as a father figure

And to generate a sense of belonging and to ensure that we involve enough
dads to make a difference, we added the final point:
o Enlisting other fathers - to make a similar commitment and to live the
life of a responsible, involved father

These are the five elements of the 2009 Father's Day Commitment: Loving,
Coaching, Modeling, Encouraging and Enlisting. Our experience is that dads
respond to this as a personal call to responsible fatherhood. They get it
and they remember it.

The Widget 
The 2009 Father's Day Commitment Widget enables anyone to enlist fathers to
make this commitment via their website or Facebook page.  The Widget will
track the number of dads who have made the commitment from that website and
the total number of commitments made from all websites.  Organizations
hosting the widget will also be able to get the email addresses of everyone
making the commitment through their website.  Links to simple instructions
for adding the widget to a web page or Facebook page are provided below:

2009 Father's Day Commitment for web pages:
Visit www.fathers.com/fday and follow the instructions to install the widget
in a prominent place on your website.  Direct people to your website to make
the 2009 Father's Day Commitment.

2009 Father's Day Commitment for Facebook:
Visit this link http://apps.facebook.com/fdaycommit/. You will probably have
to log in, but then you'll be taken to a page with the widget and icon that
says, "Add to Profile." Click on that and then you'll be prompted to confirm
that you want to add it. Go to your profile page and see your handiwork.

Start inviting your friends by going back to the original page
(http://apps.facebook.com/fdaycommit/) where all you have to do is to click
on their names to invite them.

Questions?   Problems?
If you have any problems or have any questions about either widget, please
contact cfwidget at fathers.com.  So that we can better assist you, please
provide the domain/URL of the page where the widget is in use and a short
description of the issue.

Next Steps 
With only 66 days until Father's Day, time is of the essence.  Please share
this with other advocates of responsible fathering and encourage them to
upload the widget and begin enlisting dads.

Thank you! 

Peter J. Spokes 
President, Chief Operating Officer
National Center for Fathering
Website:  www.fathers.com

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- TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Cities with MLB Baseball Teams Have a Lower Divorce Rate!
A new study shows that cities with major league baseball teams have a 28%
lower divorce rate than cities that wanted MLB teams. "Going to a baseball
game and not talking about relationship issues, but rather having fun and
talking as friends is one of the ways to protect and preserve love," Markman
says.   http://tinyurl.com/cfyz8v

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