Father A Nation SA

We would use the funding and support to scale our programs to impact more people. Over the last five years we have tested and tweaked a number of different approaches and interventions for dealing with the scourge of gender-based violence and believe that we now have tried and tested methodologies which can easily be scaled. Additional funding will enable us to scale our interventions to the point of becoming self-perpetuating, organically growing movements which will continue to produce social transformation beyond our involvement. The interventions produce behavioral changes which break patterns of abuse from the past and ensure positive, healthy emotional and psychological patterns are passed onto the next generation. Funding from the Elevate Prize will enable us to reach a critical mass of transformation where our interventions will gain a life of their own and become a movement. This is a tremendously exciting opportunity for us to grow our programs to create sustained, inter-generational social impact.

I started Father A Nation with the belief that if we can heal men, we can heal the world. By heal I mean restore, equip and inspire men to be good fathers, mentors and role models who use their strength only for good, never for harm. I live in a country which has one of the worst rates of gender-based violence and fatherlessness in the world. Men are abusing and abandoning their responsibilities at a catastrophic level and there is a desperate need to change this.  Our vision is to create a sustainable movement of men who are outstanding fathers, mentors, role models, community and nation builders, devoted to building a safe and prosperous future for all. My inspiration has been my own children. I was a single dad for many years and when my son turned 18 he gave me the greatest gift I have ever received.  He wrote me a letter in which he thanked me for being his “brother, his best friend but most importantly his father”. He went on to say, “dad you can bring this to the rest of the un-fathered world”. This inspired me to write a book on fatherhood and start FAN. 

FAN addresses the dire issues of gender-based violence (GBV), fatherlessness and destructive masculinity.  South Africa is often referred to as the rape capital of the world. In a UN report on Crime, South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita. The SA police service estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds. A woman is murdered every 8 hours, 50% of them by an intimate partner.  Our president Cyril Ramaphosa has called GBV our shadow epidemic and has named it a human rights crisis. This is a catastrophe which needs serious and immediate attention. In addition, over 60% of children in South Africa are growing up without a present father. Boys receive distorted notions about masculinity from their peers and media which leads to a host of destructive masculine behaviors. FAN addresses this directly by teaching, training, mentoring, inspiring and holding men accountable to healthy, positive behavior, attitudes and values. We have developed specialized material in the following areas:

• Excellent fatherhood.
• Understanding and overcoming GBV
• Living with positive, healthy masculinity

We use this material to restore, equip, connect and inspire men through:

• Workshops (virtual and physical).
• Free online courses.
• Community based events.
• Mentorship programs.
• Transformational conversations with men.

To effectively deal with gender-based violence we need to first understand why it is happening and then we need to put in place action-oriented interventions which effectively address the root causes. Father A Nation (FAN) has made great strides in both these areas; identifying why GBV is happening and developing programs and interventions to prevent it from happening. Most interventions aimed at curbing the abuse of masculine strength focus either on creating awareness or assisting victims of abuse.  Both are necessary and laudable but not enough to end abuse. We will only change the behavior of men by dealing with their hearts, minds and beliefs. FAN’s interventions are based on the following key insights and principles:

• Healthy masculinity is a powerful force for good.
• The solution to toxic masculinity is healthy masculinity.
• Teaching men positive, healthy masculinity helps fill the gap left by a lack of fathers, mentors and role models.
• Men need to collectively and individually stand up and take responsibility for ending destructive masculine behavior. 
• Providing a safe platform for men to talk can and does can save lives.
• Fatherhood requires presence and action.
• Men can learn to be excellent fathers.

Our goal is to have a broad and sustainable national and ultimately global impact. To do this we have developed a three-prong approach aimed at touching as many people as possible as deeply as possible. The interventions are based on educating, interacting and taking action.

1. Online activation: Ongoing campaign to the broad public challenging, stirring, and inspiring men to take action by either taking an online pledge (much like the global HeForShe campaign) or signing up for either of the free online courses.

2. Activation through organizations: Getting organizations in the public and private sector as well as educational institutions to roll out to their staff and other stakeholders in one of three ways; training key members of their staff to impact the rest of their staff, running programs for them, or providing a unique URL link to the courses for their staff / students.

3. Community based activations: This involves training and retaining community-based mentors as well as travelling mentors / facilitators doing activations in communities. It also involves forming groups of men to study the material on GBV and positive masculinity and in these groups discuss and inspire each other to live with healthy, positive masculinity.