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Health & Fitness

Give to the Max Day! Support Dads Make a Difference - Building Youth Capacity for Responsible Future Parenting

Dads Make a Difference promotes the positive involvement of fathers and educates youth about responsible parenting.

Did you know that 1 in 3 children live in homes with absent fathers at some point in their lives?  We think one is too many.  And did you know that two major factors contributing to children growing up in poverty are absent fathers and too-early parenting?  Dads do make a difference!

Dads Make a Difference (DMAD) is a statewide nonprofit organization started in 1993 with an office in downtown Stillwater.  Our DMAD peer education program helps youth build a foundation of life skills so they're better prepared to think critically about healthy relationships, about becoming sexually active, and about the challenges of parenting too soon. As a result, teens like Devin and Ann are making mature decisions about relationships, taking personal responsibility for their life choices including their readiness to be a parent, and understanding how children benefit from father involvement and co-parenting.  They're delaying parenting until they finish college, are in committed relationships, and have the financial resources to provide for a family.

DMAD trains high school-age teens from schools, community agencies, and faith-based groups to be peer educators of middle school-age youth in similar settings.  Trained teen peer educators teach the 4-lesson DMAD curriculum.  Focusing on the role of fathers in raising children, Dads Make a Difference educates young men and women about the responsibilities of parenting and the challenges of parenting too soon.  Young people who understand parental responsibility are more likely to form strong families that are emotionally and financially secure.  These families are the backbone of productive, nurturing communities.

Find out what's happening in Stillwaterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Contributions to DMAD will help us build the capacity of trained teen peer educators in local communities by providing important protective factors for youth including connections with caring adults, a way to develop their talents, honest and respectfully presented information, the opportunity to look at life planning, development of skills useful in a variety of life arenas, connection with an engaged community of young people, the chance to be a role model for younger youth, and a safe environment in which to learn and explore new concepts. 

Dads Make a Difference has made a meaningful difference in the lives of Minnesota youth and families for almost 20 years now … and your support on that journey will help make this work possible.  To date DMAD has trained 3,014 teens who have reached over 76,000 middle school-age youth with our curriculum.

Find out what's happening in Stillwaterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Check us out at www.dadsmakeadifference.org.  You can also check out our video project with Twin Cities Public Television titled Be There: Dads Matter at www.mnvideovault.org and then searching on the program title.

GiveMN's Give to the Max Day is Thursday, November 15th.  If Dads Make a Difference gets on the small nonprofit donation leaderboard that day we have a chance to earn bonus dollars ranging from $1,000 to $12,500.  Any donation you can make that day will help us compete and continue this important work.  http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Dads-Make-A-Difference

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