The basic building block for both of our current initiatives and any future plans will be our "Man Class". We believe that the present definition of a man in many of our communities is distorted and perverted. For too many in our community men are portrayed as not willing to be employed, not willing to obey laws, and not willing to take responsibility for their children. It is not surprising when one considers that for the last few generations a lot of our young men have not had the direction, influence, and discipline of a father in their lives. Men learn to be men from being around and watching other men, without that role model many of our young men are left to the caricatures found in the media or from their peers many of whom have also not had positive male figures in their lives.

We believe if we will have success in our efforts to develop responsible men we need to demolish these false concepts of manhood and begin to replace them with positive concepts of what a responsible man represents. We should not continue to allow these distortions to go unchallenged in our community. Can a bad man become a good father? In our opinion the answer is simple unless you develop a foundation of a good man you cannot develop a good father, a bad man we believe cannot be a good father.

The goal of the man class will be to pull down those false portrayals of manhood and replace them over time with the values of responsibility and commitment. We should not view this as an opportunity to shame bad men into becoming good men, in stead we view it as taking untrained men and training them to become better parents. So often we expect people who are untrained in an area to perform as if they were trained and this is a falacy. If a person does not know how to do something or has never been taught how to it is a travesty to expect them to be able to do it. We believe that if a person's life experiences are different then their reality will be different and we have to account for those differences when we craft initiatives to combat certain problems.

The man class provides our participants with 10 life lessons or values that a father would teach a son. Men and women parent differently and with the absence of so many men in our community the influence of the male has gone missing. The ten lessons the man class hopes to impart are:

1. Class 1 – Rocking the Foundation
2. Class 2 – Dress Code & Discipline
3. Class 3 – Why Am I Angry?
4. Class 4 – We Learn by Watching
5. Class 5 – Self-Destruction & Personality
6. Class 6 – Interpersonal Communication
7. Class 7 – Cognitive Skills
8. Class 8 – Overcoming Obstacles
9. Class 9 – Organizational Skills
10. Lesson 10 – Financial Literacy
11. Lesson 11 – Breaking the Cycle
12. Lesson 12 – Personal Life Skills

We hope to provide untrained men with the skills they need to become life long partners in their childrens lives and to help train our young men to become more accountable. The "man class" is the beginning of that process.

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit." - Luke 6:43