In April the Colorado Fatherhood Council brought Ray Upchurch to his hometown of Denver to screen his film documentary, Daddy Hunger. Ray spent the day at the Gilliam Detention Center and the evening to a standing room only crowd at the Shadow Theatre.

The film is a powerful presentation of the pain, struggle and hope that whirls around the hearts of father absent homes, particularly African-American homes. Ray confesses that he never set out to produce a film let alone know how to produce one, but he did and I, among many, am grateful. I am especially encouraged that Ray is committed to using the film to stimulate community dialogue on the impact of father absence. On that Thursday evening at the Shadow Theatre the dialogue began with the voices of a young dad just out of prison wanting to know how to reconnect with his child, a young mom wanting her ex-husband to be involved in her son's life but rightfully concerned about his violent past, and a young boy who missed his dad and wished there was a man who would do things with him. The magic built through the evening. After each voice another voice spoke up from across the room stating with compassion and confidence, "We're here. We can help you . . ."

That evening gave birth to the dream of recruiting 1000 men across Colorado to participate in existing organizations and ministries to become mentors to boys and girls of father absent homes.

In a blog post in May on a similar topic ( Putting Men into Mentoring)* Nancy Gonzalez took a stab as an amateur epidemiologist reviewing Census data to get an idea of the societal potential of youth mentoring and its possibilities for impact on public health. Nancy wrote:

The population of the U.S. is just over 300 million and the number of adult male ages 20 - 64 is almost 90 million. Let's just say hypothetically that when one screens out those with pathologies, those who are temperamentally unsuitable or those who are unavailable for other reasons, we are left with 10% of U.S. men who could act as positive role models for youth (probably a conservative estimate).

Now let's suppose that these 9 million men mentored 9 million youth. There are about 42 million boys ages 0 - 19 in the U.S. That would mean that roughly one in five male youth would have an older dude to look up to. Imagine! Bill Marsiglio cites that there are likely about 3 million American kids who are active in official mentoring programs. Let's take a leap and say that half are boys, so 1.5 million. What if we could raise the number of formal mentors by six fold?

There are undoubtedly many youth who are being mentored via informal "programs" by neighbors or other adults in their lives outside their families; Bill estimates that approximately 50 - 60 % of youth have such a relationship. But that still means that there are roughly 20 million boys in the U.S. who have no significant non-family male role model in their lives.

The cost to these boys** may be substantial. In a study that he cites from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, youth ages 10 - 16 who were involved in a one-on-one mentoring relationship were significantly less likely to initiate drug or alcohol use, hit someone, or skip school. . . . How can we get more men involved youth work?

How can we get more men involved as mentors? We've set the very reasonable yet impactful goal of recruiting 1000 male mentors to existing mentoring programs. In order to continue the conversation Ray Upchurch is returning to Denver with his film to build community awareness and commitment. Join us at 7 PM on Thursday, June 18 at Now Faith Christian Center Church, 4834 N. Chambers Road, Denver 80239.

*Nancy's post is a review of William Marsiglio's book Men on a Mission. Marsiglio writes about his qualitative study of 55 adult men who engage in youth development activities.
**Nancy adds a personal epilogue to her post following further discussions with Marsiglio on the valuable impact male mentors have on girls' development.