Fatherhood Foundations: Building Stronger Families, One Dad at a Time

Fatherhood Foundations

Fatherhood Foundations is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering fathers and strengthening families. By providing evidence-based programs and life skills training, we aim to equip men with the tools they need to become engaged, supportive, and responsible fathers. Our work focuses on addressing the root causes of family challenges, such as fatherlessness, by teaching conflict resolution, anger management, effective communication, and parenting strategies. Through partnerships with recovery homes, prisons, and community organizations, we help fathers break cycles of dysfunction and create healthier environments for their children. Together, we’re building stronger families, one dad at a time.

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-Transcript-

Brad Burrow (00:00:01):
Welcome to In A World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts, get inspired, then go live your story. It’s in a world with real media. Hello and welcome to In A World with Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow, and today we have Don Lewis and Lee Bramlet from Fatherhood Foundations here with us today. This is really a cool thing for me because if any of you know some of my backstory, I had been in the hospital with COVID for a month and the day that I came out of the hospital, we had our first meeting. I

Lee Bramlet (00:00:50):
Remember that. Oh, that’s right. I remember that. I remember that

Brad Burrow (00:00:51):
Day. At your house. And just a little context for everybody. Pastor Don, you and I had met on a project and I remember meeting you and I just knew instantly meeting you that this is somebody I wanted to spend some time with. You probably have that being a Hollywood actor like you are and everything.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:01:12):
Of course. But it’s like love at first sight. We met and we clicked. We clicked. We really did. And we had some things in common and both of us passionate about what we were pursuing and seeing.

Brad Burrow (00:01:27):
Yeah. And so we would have, this is funny, we’ll do a little history of you and I knowing each other, but I think this is kind of relevant to Fatherhood Foundations because we would have breakfast and every Friday morning, almost every Friday morning we would have breakfast. And I probably gained about 20 pounds.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:01:47):
We found ourselves just kind of solving the world’s problems as we ate breakfast at that restaurant every week. And at some point in time you suggested that we ought to pursue a podcast and not just one, but talk about the things we’re talking about over breakfast. Take this to a podcast for you and see if we can be of value to some individuals and some communities.

Brad Burrow (00:02:12):
And that resulted in a podcast. That’s how I learned how to do podcasting. It was called Unmasking Truth. And so we did a hundred episodes. Lee and his wife were on three or four episodes, I believe. I can’t remember. We talked about your time. I want to get into that a little bit and tell our audience a little bit about that. But I remember Don talking about your passion for teaching men how to be fathers. I’ve always believed that too. The problems that we have probably go back a lot to how we were raised and how our fathers treated us.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:02:52):
That’s very true. Would

Brad Burrow (00:02:52):
You agree with that?

Pastor Don Lewis (00:02:53):
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I will argue that our problem begins with boys, young boys in elementary school. Boys are different than girls and they tend to learn differently than girls do. And generally speaking, boys tend to be kinesthetic learners and that is they learn by doing as opposed to learn by visual or auditory means. And there are exceptions to what I’m saying, of course, but you have a typical girl sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture or reading a book and deriving truth out of those two experiences and she’s making progress. Too many of our boys do not excel through that means. And that is that they don’t do well simply listening to a lecture. They don’t do well simply visualizing things on the board and what have you. And I think it begins way back there, not as a behavioral issue, but it ultimately leads to behavioral issues.

(00:04:01):
But it begins with the fact that this kid may be bored, he may be disinterested, he’s not getting it. And we tend to not get it, meaning society when this kid is not excelling the way his female counterpart is. And he gets into middle school and he’s acting out, he’s a class clown or he’s simply disinterested looking out the window

(00:04:24):
Or he’s disruptive. And eventually he’s faced with the possibility of dropping out of high school and for too long we’ve accepted that as well. Those are just bad boys who do those kinds of things. I’m not convinced they’re bad boys. I’m convinced that these kids simply we have not properly understood how do you appeal to enrich a kid and help a kid to feel that he has a home in the educational process. And so we begin to lose them at an early age in terms of education academics, but it shows his ugly head during those teenage years. And so there’s things that we need to consider and things that we need to do in our whole educational process. I’ve actually talked to learned educators. I’m talking PhDs about this very thing and they agreed with me. They wholeheartedly agree with me and said, “But what do we do about it is the issue.”

Brad Burrow (00:05:28):
That’s the question, right?

Pastor Don Lewis (00:05:29):
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:05:30):
Which is where this came from, Lee. So let’s switch gears a little bit. So you were part of that first meeting in my living room.

Lee Bramlet (00:05:38):
Had

Brad Burrow (00:05:39):
Oxygen coming out.

Lee Bramlet (00:05:40):
Yeah. It’s incredible. Just think back. We were thinking, is there even a need for this? Eventually we got advice from people. We checked around, we kind of did a needs analysis and we looked, is this a strategic thing? And what we found, the stats were so alarming that not only a need, we were overwhelmed about how much of a need it was. We underestimated the gravity of not having a father in a home from that research. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:06:07):
Yet there’s not been much done about it. Would you agree with that? I mean, you’re saying that’s exactly right. And I’ve always felt that too. This is why our talks had resonated with me, but yet nobody has said, “Let’s do something about this.

Lee Bramlet (00:06:22):
” Well, and I think it’s just that for men we think we’re just made to pull ourselves up our own bootstraps. We all have a hard life and we just pull forward. What we don’t realize for some men, they don’t have any bootstraps to pull up in a sense they didn’t have a father in a home and people don’t understand that. So it’s easier to, and we need to have every program we have for women.That’s critical and it’s important, but just we kind of focus on that. We don’t focus on fathers and the training, but there is something systemic about it. We just don’t do it and very few people are doing it.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:06:55):
There’s a strange relationship between men and anger. There’s a very strange relationship between men and anger. I’m repeating myself and it needs to be addressed. Let me give you just a quick explanation of what I mean. Number one, a boy needs to be taught how and why to control his anger. And if there’s not a dad there to provide that understanding, a boy needs to be taught that it is not a demonstration of manhood to be a fighter, to be one to pick up a gun. That’s not a demonstration of manhood, but you go out on the streets and that’s what’s promoted.

(00:07:42):
A real man is not going to put up with that. A real man wouldn’t take that from somebody and they’re not being told that a real man actually is one who knows how to resolve conflict. A real man knows how to control not only his anger, but to control his drives a real man. And there are guys that tell me, “I’ve never heard that before. No one ever told me that. And here that guy is an adult, maybe he spends some time in prison, he’s done a term and what have you. ” And he said, “I’ve never heard anybody tell me that. A real man understands conflict resolution. A real man understands anger management.” No, they were taught a real man takes his coat off and goes for it when you insult him. And so those are the things- That’s just what

Brad Burrow (00:08:30):
You do,

Pastor Don Lewis (00:08:30):
Right? No, it’s just what you do. Otherwise, they’re saying you’re punking out. And so those are the kinds of things that motivate us, Lee and myself, we got to teach guys what real manhood looks like. They weren’t taught when they were boys, which is when they should have learned these things.

Brad Burrow (00:08:50):
Yeah. I think about Don, you and I’ve talked many times and I remember you telling the story of your dad and I don’t know if you can remember that story, but I think it was one time you thought you were going to be in trouble and it had something to do with a bike maybe. Do you remember the story I’m talking about? But I just remember you telling the stories about how your dad disciplined you and how that taught you so much. Can you talk about that a little bit? I mean, you had that foundation from the very beginning.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:09:22):
I did. I had a great relationship with my dad. He was there. I don’t remember him ever yelling at me. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. I don’t remember him ever threatening me, yelling. Now, did he spank me? Yeah, I needed it. In fact, I didn’t get enough of spankings for what I earned and deserved, but the thing that impacts me is the fact that he was known for sitting down with me and talking with me and explaining to me why certain behaviors were inappropriate. He would explain it to me.

(00:09:50):
He would yell at me and try to beat it into me. And just talking to me, what he was doing probably without his understanding and certainly without mine is the fact that he was showing me how to handle conflict. There I was, I met some major blunder, excuse me and somehow my dad discovers it and he sits down and he explains. Rather than yelling at me, screaming at me and calling me a name or what have you and telling me how stupid my behavior was or how stupid I was, he talked with me and explained why it was inappropriate behavior and it would not be tolerated. Now he was firm, get me wrong.

(00:10:33):
I remember we were at some kind of family gathering. There were a bunch of people there and I’m just a young kid. I’m probably seven or eight years of age and I’m acting out and behaving inappropriately. A typical seven year old boy, but I could feel, I knew my dad was looking at me and I didn’t want to give him eye contact. I was working hard at not giving that guy eye contact. Eventually I caved. I gave, looked at him and he was looking right at me. I was right and he literally directed me across the room and sat me down without moving anything but his eyes. His eyes moved me across the room and sat me in a chair and it reminds me now of the passage in scripture, how God will guide us with his eyes because my dad guided me across the room and there was a crowd there and we navigated that and I ended up being sat down in a chair and he did it without saying a word.

Brad Burrow (00:11:34):
That’s funny.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:11:35):
Yeah, it’s comical now. It’s like lasers. Exactly. Like some Star Wars movie, but he had that kind of influence in my life and I will argue that is healthy. I’m telling you, he never threatened me. He never just beat the Tara out of me. He didn’t do that. I got spanked as when I needed him, no question. And the point is this, is that growing up was not an abusive experience for me and that helped me to understand how to raise my own kids because that was the way I was raised and it was easier for me to make those transitions because of the influence of my dad. And my mom was there. My mom was there and she was a stay at home mom, which is another subject. And so she was home when I came home from school and that was significant. Loving mom, no question.

Lee Bramlet (00:12:34):
She

Pastor Don Lewis (00:12:35):
Tended to be a yeller. My dad was not and I tend to not be, not only am I not a yeller, I can’t handle being yelled at. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:12:46):
Yeah. Interesting. I think that you’re onto something with, and I’ve got three boys and the first one made a lot of mistakes and I kind of learned and I finally got okay at being a dad at the end, I think.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:13:01):
Sure.

Brad Burrow (00:13:02):
But one of the things I’ve always believed is that when you do discipline them, the boys, it’s like if you explain to them, “Here’s what the problem is. Here’s why this is wrong.” I don’t think in our society that’s done anymore very much. It’s like, “Okay, now I know why you’re upset with me. I know why I made a mistake. And here’s the consequences that are going to come from that if you keep doing that. ” Exactly. And I can’t keep doing that. And I think that made a huge difference in them understanding, okay, you’re not just mad at me for no reason.

Lee Bramlet (00:13:35):
Yeah. Well, and I kind of remember that bike store at Pastor Donna’s when he was really young, he was in school and needed to go to the restroom, needed to go to the restroom, but he couldn’t go. And then eventually it was too late. And then what happened? Then you left. Then I left the school.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:13:54):
My pants were wet and I was embarrassed. And so the lunchtime bell rang and I was first one out of my seat, first person in the hall and I ran down the hall towards the boys’ restrooms and urinating on myself as I’m going down the stairs, I had no control because I get to the bathroom, locked myself in a hall, a stall and there I was hoping my pants would dry by the time lunchtime was over. And of course my pants didn’t and I was not going to walk down the hall with wet pants. I was not going to go to my classroom wet pants and I just took off and just started roaming the community. I left the school ground. So I’m in the third grade, left the school and a stray dog took up with me.

Brad Burrow (00:14:44):
This sounds like a film right now.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:14:47):
And so as the afternoon evolved, I had a plan. My plan was I would go home at the regular time I would have gotten home had I gone to school, minute school, and I’d act like I’d been to school all day and then I’d return to school the next day and everything would be fine. Didn’t realize the fact that a child can’t show up missing without there being some kind of response.

Lee Bramlet (00:15:12):
So

Pastor Don Lewis (00:15:12):
My teacher reported me to the principal’s office that I was missing after lunch. The principal’s office contacted my mom at home and my dad at work literally and then I was told the police were looking for me once I got … So I go home at 3:30, 3:45 and before I could even open the door, my mom swings the door open and she, “Where have you been?” I mean, she was worried sick

(00:15:38):
And I lied and I said, “I’ve been in school.” “No, you haven’t. The whole school’s looking for you. “And she told me about all the agencies, the teacher, the principal, that she had gotten a call. My dad had gotten a call at work- FBICI. And the police department was looking for me and that was so overwhelming because a third grade knuckleheaded boy, I didn’t think all those things were going to be kicking in. I mean they had and it was frightening. And so I lied to her. Now she gave me a whipping and I needed it. But the point though was this, I did not do what I did because I was just being mischievous. I did not do what I did because I didn’t like school. I simply didn’t know what to do. My pants were wet. And so I figured, well, I just need to leave the school grounds.

(00:16:34):
No one will see me then and I won’t have to deal with what are your pants doing wet. One of the worst things a kid can do is wet on himself and all the other kids see that, of course they make fun of him. So there it is

(00:16:47):
And I get this whipping and I’m laying on my bed and my mom says to me, ” Yo wait till your daddy gets home. “And so I knew what that meant. So anyway, my dad comes home around 5:15, 5:30. I remember this so clearly and I hear him talking to my mom and she’s explaining to him what I had said and then he comes into the room and he says,” What happened? “And he asked me, ” What happened? “He didn’t just come into the room and scream and holler or swinging a belt. He says,” What happened? “And I explained to him about my accident and he understood. He understood. He understood that a boy is not going to be walking around the school with wet pants with his head held high. He peed on himself and he understood that. It wasn’t like he agreed with my problem solving skills, he understood.

(00:17:50):
And so the conclusion was this, was that he says,” Okay, get ready for dinner. “And he turns to walk out the room and I say to him,” I guess I’m not getting that bike. “That’s the bike you’re referencing, right?

(00:18:04):
Well, I was scheduled to get my first bike. My birthday was coming up. In fact, it’s around the same time of the year as right now. My birthday’s May 30th and I was just a few days from May 30th and I was going to get my first bike. That was a promise my parents had given me third grader. And I say to my dad as he’s walking out the room,” I guess I’m not getting that bike. I don’t know where I got the nerve to even say that. I caused so much trouble, but I said, I guess I’m not getting that bike. “I expected him to say,” You got that right. “He looks at me and he says,” We’ll see. We’ll see. I will never forget that. We’ll see.

Lee Bramlet (00:18:41):
“Wow.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:18:43):
And a couple of days roll over and next thing I know I have that brand new bike. I didn’t feel like I’d gotten away with anything. I felt like I hadn’t destroyed my life. It would have been easy for me to convince me that, boy, you have made the ultimate mistake with the police looking for me? I’m a third grader.

Brad Burrow (00:19:09):
And

Pastor Don Lewis (00:19:10):
The fact that I’m hearing Will C when I say,” I guess I’m not getting that bike. “And I did. I did.

Brad Burrow (00:19:18):
That marked you.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:19:19):
It marked well put. It marked me. I’m talking about it still. It marked me that my dad talked to me, he understood, and I got the bike. I’ll never forget it.

Brad Burrow (00:19:36):
Amazing story. So let’s transition a little bit here. Lee, you and I were talking about some of the stats around fatherlessness and fathers, people growing up without fathers. Talk about some of those stats.

Lee Bramlet (00:19:53):
I mean, these are some of the results we found out when you started doing a little research, but we realized that 90%, Brad, of all homeless and runaway children, they are from fatherless homes. Wow. Yeah. We also looked at 63% of youth suicide victims come from fatherless homes. Wow. 63%. And when we look at juveniles and state institutions, 70% come from homes where there’s no father. So these are life changing events for young children, right? Yeah. And when there’s a father in a home, there’s an 80% less chance that that child will go to prison when a father’s in the home.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:20:37):
Wow.

Lee Bramlet (00:20:38):
And when a father’s in a home, the chance of a teen pregnancy is drastically reduced.

Brad Burrow (00:20:46):
Amazing.

Lee Bramlet (00:20:47):
I

Brad Burrow (00:20:48):
Mean, it’s sobering, honestly think about this.

Lee Bramlet (00:20:52):
And after four years, we’re constantly testing to say,” Are we teaching the right courses? Are we appropriate? That kind of thing. But one thing we test on, something we call the ACE test. Yeah. Tell us

Brad Burrow (00:21:04):
About that.

Lee Bramlet (00:21:04):
Yeah. That’s the adverse childhood event test and this is a common practice. And typically that’s just 10 questions. We ask all of our participants. There are questions like, was your home safe when you grew up? Is there violence? Did your parents get divorced? Was there molestation? Was there alcoholism? It just goes on with questions. And if you are between zero and three, you typically are going to do okay in society, right? But Brad, once you get to four, the world changes. And once you start getting a score four or five or six, things happen. And we tested the men that we have. This over time, first we thought it was anomaly, but it keeps happening. When our men take the class and we test them, 70% have a … I mean, they have a score. I mean, all of them have a score of seven or higher.

(00:22:07):
Okay.

Brad Burrow (00:22:07):
Of the guys.

Lee Bramlet (00:22:10):
Is

Brad Burrow (00:22:10):
That at Lansing?

Lee Bramlet (00:22:11):
They’re average at Lansing at Healing Health, RTK. The average of all the people is a score of seven. Yeah. A score of seven. And what a score of seven means, this puts the individual at the highest risk for long-term physical, mental, and behavioral health challenges. Wow. Yeah. This is evidence.This comes from CDC and Kaiser Permanente. Wow. This is not us that says that. But when we have a seven or higher, suicide attempts, Brad, are 3,100% higher.

Brad Burrow (00:22:44):
Wow.

Lee Bramlet (00:22:45):
When you have a score of seven, depression is 460% more likely. When you have a seven, intravenous drug use is 1,000% more likely. And it comes into these chronic illnesses, Brad, because this … And all this happened when they were young. A score of seven increases lung disease by 390%. Is that

Brad Burrow (00:23:09):
Right?

Lee Bramlet (00:23:09):
Wow. Wow. Heart disease is more than double. Hepatitis and liver disease is a 240% increase. Cancer and diabetes is double a score of zero. So when these men were in their early, early formative years and they had all these events that happened, this marked them, like you were Mark Pastor Don. Exactly. This marks these men physically and emotionally for the rest of their life. And so these are the men we serve and it’s just an honor to serve these men, to give them a leg up, to give them some skills so they have a chance to defeat those odds. And with even a score of six, these men will die 20 years earlier.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:23:56):
So

Lee Bramlet (00:23:56):
The life expectancy is reduced. So it’s evidence based our curriculum, but it’s evidence. While we do what we do, the research shows that if we can reduce this in these men’s life, get them in the training, we have the odds of changing that next generation so they don’t have the same odds as their father. So we’re always working for that next generation. That’s

Pastor Don Lewis (00:24:18):
Powerful league.

Lee Bramlet (00:24:19):
That’s

Brad Burrow (00:24:20):
Really powerful. Breaking the cycle that’s happening because that takes me to … Years ago, not years ago, a couple years ago, I did a video for Kensey Christian School and one of the kids was, he was from an urban setting, maybe on a scholarship at KCC, but he immediately was put around more affluent kids and families and stuff like that and was around families that had a father and he had no idea what that life was like and kind of grew up like that a little bit like through his teenage years. And what he realized is that he wanted that. He wanted to be a father, but he’d never ever seen that in his life. So in his family, and I remember him talking about, it’s like, well, the way we were taught to live is we would just go out and hook up with women and whatever happens, happens.

(00:25:22):
I don’t need to be a father. I’m just going to go live my life. And when he saw what a real family looked like, he desired that.

Lee Bramlet (00:25:29):
Yes. And we’re made for that Brad. Yes,

Brad Burrow (00:25:31):
Right.

Lee Bramlet (00:25:31):
It’s true. But these men don’t necessarily know how. If you’ve never had a father, how do you do that? And if you haven’t had a father for two generations like in the urban core, how do you become a father?

Pastor Don Lewis (00:25:42):
See, the deal is this. For me personally, I grew up in Oakland, California. I grew up in the urban court. Most of my friends, my buddies had dads at home. Most of my friends had dads and I would refer to them as Mr. This and Mr. That. But you go back to that same community today I guarantee you it’s the exact opposite. And so here’s a hypothetical situation. Okay. Let’s say I’m a typical teenager. I’m in junior high right now. Maybe I’m 13, 14 years of age and some kid challenges me and we become angry and we’re about to fight. And what I’m faced with is that because there’s a crowd around us that’s egging us on. And that actually happened to me the first day of school, by the way, in junior high, the seventh grade and they would rather see a good fight.

(00:26:33):
And the point is this is that if I haven’t been taught and if it hasn’t been modeled to me that a real man controls his anger, a real man pursues resolving conflict. Hey, let’s talk. Rather than throw blows at each other, let’s talk. I mean, why we want to fight anyway? No, I didn’t say anything about your mother. I don’t want to think about your mother. So they were egging your mom saying that he’s talking about your mother, man, and all that. And I don’t know your mother. And so if we’re going to fight, at least let’s fight for a reason. Why would I talk about your mother who I don’t know in the first place? But we don’t think, we don’t reason. And if I’ve never seen anyone reason two people, particularly my parents who I’ve never seen anyone just control their anger resolve conflict, I just think, well, what we need to do is fight it out.

(00:27:30):
Now you take that same kid who’s 14 years of age, seven years later, he’s 21, perhaps he wants to be cool so he’s packing a gun because he’s told that a real cool guy in the hood, he’s packing heat.

(00:27:47):
Okay. Then you come to the realization that I’m dangerous, not only to myself, I’m dangerous to other people because not only do I have a gun, but I do not control my anger. I do not know to resolve conflict. In fact, I think it’s a manly strength to not resolve conflict except with a nine millimeter. And then that’s when we begin, “Oh my God, where are these kids coming from? Who are these kids? They’re killing each other. They’re killing others.” And no, it didn’t start when I was 21. It started when I was seven or eight.

(00:28:25):
It started … In fact, I’ll take it even further than that. I was at all the births of my children. I have three sons and one daughter and one of the things that I planned and the process my wife giving birth is I was her coach. So when the baby came out of the womb, I was right there. And after the medical team cleaned the baby up and maybe the baby nursed and then they would hand the baby to me I literally opened my smock and I planned this to where I was bare chested and I took the baby and took the blanket off the baby and I laid that baby, that infant on my chest skin to skin. Now, I don’t know if that sounds weird to anyone, but this is what I was doing. I was beginning the process of bonding, bonding with my child, my child bonding with me.

Lee Bramlet (00:29:17):
It’s

Pastor Don Lewis (00:29:19):
A very significant and proven strategy of beginning the process of bonding. And then as the child continues to grow and mature, I continue to provide affection for that child. I hold the child, I hug the child, rub the child’s head, things like that and showing that kind of affection I’m adding to the bonding process. Now here’s the key. There is this phenomena that exists today in a kid who’s never bonded with anyone to where he doesn’t feel what other people feel. He can literally see a tragedy He and not relate to it and it not become a tragedy to him because he hasn’t bonded with anyone.

Brad Burrow (00:30:09):
Right. Doesn’t understand how to feel.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:30:11):
He doesn’t know how to feel. That explains to me one of the reasons why there’s so much homicide going on in the lives of young people today because they have not, it’s called attachment disorder where they are not attached

Lee Bramlet (00:30:28):
To

Pastor Don Lewis (00:30:28):
Anyone. And so they could see a person not only injured and not feel any compassion, but they can be the person who injured the individual and not have any sense of compassion because they are detached. It’s called attachment disorder. It begins at infancy.

Lee Bramlet (00:30:48):
Yeah.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:30:49):
And we know these things. This is not some great secret. We know that, but we’re not doing anything about it. But it has a lot to do with the lack of structure in the family. It has to do with the fact that we have absentee fathers. It has to do with the fact that these mothers are raising kids and they’re trying to survive rather than thrive. They’re just trying to survive.

Brad Burrow (00:31:09):
Yeah. So you’ve taken the tactic of we’re going to attack this problem by training fathers.

Lee Bramlet (00:31:19):
Fathers. Yeah, correct.

Brad Burrow (00:31:20):
Because that’s the best place to start. Got to start somewhere

Pastor Don Lewis (00:31:23):
TG.

Brad Burrow (00:31:24):
Yeah. So talk about that and I want to transition into like Healing House and Lansing and Two Lines as you called it. Sure. But talk about, that’s where we got to attack this problem and that’s what Fatherhood Foundations has done is we’ve figured out the point of entry and we’re going after that.

Lee Bramlet (00:31:44):
That’s it. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:31:46):
Talk about that a little bit, Lee. Just explain that tactic.

Lee Bramlet (00:31:53):
The tactic is if we can go in and teach father’s life skills and we can come in and help them understand how to manage their anger, how to manage conflict, how to speak to their wives and their exes, how to speak to their children, how to make decisions, Brad. If you’ve lived your whole life, we work with men and we ask, when’s the last decision you made to use a positive, negative analysis? How’d you do that? Did you get advisor? How’d you do it? And we have 60, 70% of the men that can’t remember a time they made a decision. So they just slide into these decisions and when you slide into a decision rather than making it, own it, you don’t learn from it. So you just perpetually sliding into life and not deciding it. And that’s really bad for your wife and your kids.

(00:32:42):
But we teach these competencies. We also teach stereotyping. We teach how to communicate multiple courses, how to communicate. But also what do children need? If we help the dad understand what kids need from zero to nine months, what they need prenatal, what they need from one to two, three to four, six, all the way up to 18. And then after 25 and we have six weeks that we just talk about what kids need at every level. When we do that,

(00:33:12):
That helps a father become a father.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:33:14):
It’s true.

Lee Bramlet (00:33:14):
Helps him understand how to do it. And then we say, “What do kids need most from dads?” And when we ask them, they think, “We need to go to Disneyland, save up for that. ” But really research shows us they just need time with their dad. They just need the presence. I grew up thinking, oh, if I give quality time that’s better than quantity time. Kids want quantity time. They want all the time they can get with dad. You can just be thrown up in the air, you can be reading a book, you can just be doing something that kid. That’s what they want.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:33:44):
Plan catch.

Lee Bramlet (00:33:45):
That’s what they want. So we teach fathers how to live life, how to respect the women in their life, the mothers, their exes. And a lot of these guys, they get into a trap. If they’re just having sex with one woman after another woman, after another woman, can you imagine having eight women you have children with and already have 17 kids, which just happened before? Yeah. You’re just going to run from life, right? Yeah. All those kids feel abandoned. All those women feel abandoned.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:34:15):
They’re angry.

Lee Bramlet (00:34:16):
Yep. And so you’ve got a mess. And so we just give men the confidence to go in, make decisions and to clean up their life and not be the best dad that ever walked on the planet. Just be an average good dad. And that’s what the family needs. And so we’ve taken the approach to equip them. If they have back child support, if they’re divorced and that kind of thing, we work with the state to help them pay back that child support in a sense we can reduce. So certainly in the state of Missouri, they can pay back what they can afford. They never get rid of paying back the child support, but if you have to pay $1,100 a month on child support, you’re only making 800. That’s a problem. So they just run away and they don’t pay. So we help men make the decisions, take charge of their life bit by bit, bit by bit, walk forward.

Brad Burrow (00:35:04):
Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to mention too is that I’ve sit in on several of the classes at Healing House and it’s really interesting watching light bulbs come on. You guys can probably see that. So talk about some of the … We have a graduation, you see everybody going up and they’re talking about how their life’s been changed by the class and stuff. It’s really amazing to see. But when you’re teaching the class, do you see light bulbs coming

Lee Bramlet (00:35:33):
On? Well, we used an approach and I would say our secret sauce is we spent a lot of money, we invest a lot and we do a lot of training to help our facilitators facilitate and not just teach. If we’re just teaching, that’s just what the men had in high school. They didn’t like it then. They don’t like it now. And it’s the lowest form of adult education you can do just teaching. So we facilitate the class. So we get the men talking. As the leader of the class, we know where we want to go. We know the outcome we want to get to, but we work the room. We get everybody talking and sometimes they learn as much from the other men in the room as from us. And when that’s happened, the light bulbs click on because we’re meeting them right where they are.

(00:36:15):
We don’t always know where they are, but you get the team teaching to … Every person in the classroom, they’re all giving their input. They’re all talking about the topic. We’re meeting them all where they’re at and then we can add that last little bit and teach the topic and it’s a beautiful thing and light bulbs click on.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:36:33):
So on evening I was facilitating a class the subject happened to be dealing with was sexual dynamics between men and women. And as I’m facilitating, one of the students yells out, literally yells, “Every relationship I’ve ever had has been destroyed by sex.” And then others began to echo that same complaint, every relationship we ever had destroyed by sex. And that was their way of saying, “Okay, a light’s come on. I understand now. I can see there’s a reason why I haven’t been able to get along with my child’s mother.” And then one guy literally said to me that he was angry. I said, “What do you mean? Angry with who?” “With me. I’m the facilitator. Why are you angry with me? “This is in front of the entire class. He’s telling me that I’ve never heard this kind of stuff before. I’ve never heard about controlling your anger.

(00:37:33):
All I ever knew when I was growing up was yelling, screaming and threats and what have you. And so you’re standing up here and telling me that we were supposed to be talking things out and resolving conflict and I’m angry, man. I’m angry because no one ever told me this. And here I am at my age and gone through what I’ve gone through and I’m hearing for the first time that I could have a family and we could learn to get along and he truly was angry.

(00:38:08):
He felt like he had been kicked in the butt and no one ever told him.

Brad Burrow (00:38:12):
Yeah. Rightly so.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:38:14):
Yeah. Right.

Brad Burrow (00:38:15):
I mean, that’s a good sign that he’s angry.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:38:17):
It was. It was a very good sign and was a very good response to what Lee was saying. We don’t go in there with the attitude. We’re going to lecture. No. We’re going to facilitate and see if we can get the class involved in the learning process.

Brad Burrow (00:38:31):
Yeah. So talk about where you’re currently doing classes. There’s several places. I know Lansing, Healing House and Two Lines and then other places. Talk about what the program looks like right now.

Lee Bramlet (00:38:47):
Okay. I’ll talk about Lansing, talk about the others, but Lansing right now, we’re running five or six programs. We run one program called Inside Out Dads, which is some National Fatherhood Initiative and that’s kind of a dad’s program. And then we teach within My Reach. It’s a program by Prep out of Colorado Springs. It’s a relationship decision making class. So we teach five of those classes there. Then we also teach those same classes at Healing House, Shelter KC, two lines, sometimes Ozark Recovery Center. We teach at New Beginning Sanctuary and so we teach at recovery homes and what we want to do is we want to go in and partner with the organizations that’s already there. Like in Lansing, we go with Brothers in Blue Recovery. So they’re established. We come in and add our bed. And so they may teach classes like Authentic Manhood.

(00:39:44):
They teach a lot of covet materials, great stuff. We come in, some of it’s duplicated, some of it’s not, but when we teach that stuff with a point of taking care of your kids, it clicks. And so we do the same thing for like Healing House. They have programs and stuff, but we come in and we teach ours and when we put an emphasis to take everything they’ve learned in that program, apply it to your kids, it gives them a motivation to do it. So the thing is, what we call as a servant partner model. We come in, we serve these organizations that we’re at and by teaching our programs, it reinforces what they’re doing and they’re better for it and the men are better for it.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:40:23):
And the classes last for, let’s say 13 sessions, 13, 14, 15, usually 13 sessions. And so 13 weeks straight we come in and then at the conclusion of exhausting the curriculum, then we’ll have a graduation ceremony and it’s a big deal.

Brad Burrow (00:40:41):
That’s

Pastor Don Lewis (00:40:41):
Pretty fun. It’s great. We want to promote that. We want to promote that. In fact, some of these guys have confessed that they didn’t graduate from high school perhaps, let alone college. And they said, this is the first time I’ve ever been a part of a graduation ceremony where they were honored and celebrated. We encouraged them, invite your family, invite the mother of your children. And our last graduation ceremony at Healing House, we estimate we had around 250 spectators. Wow. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:41:11):
That’s amazing.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:41:12):
And people just they hoop. Celebrate. Celebrate.

Brad Burrow (00:41:15):
Celebrate.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:41:15):
Yeah. It’s cool.

Brad Burrow (00:41:16):
Do you have that many or do you have a graduation at Lansing too?

Lee Bramlet (00:41:21):
We do. We do it. It’s typically in the class and sometimes we do it, what they call community. Yeah. I was wondering about that one. Yeah. So in medium and maximum, that’s a group of about 120, 125. So we have it there. And so all the men there get to see these men that come through and they get a certificate. It’s got a gold rim around it. It’s powerful. Yeah, very powerful. It’s celebrating that they have made this milestone. Well, what do you have

Pastor Don Lewis (00:41:45):
Achieved something? Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:41:47):
What do they think coming into the class? That’s one thing I’ve … I mean, are they open? Obviously they said, yeah, I’m going to do this. But the guys I saw at Healing House seemed pretty, most of them were pretty enthusiastic about being there. I mean, is that what you’re seeing is like they’re ready to come learn?

Lee Bramlet (00:42:04):
Well, when they start, I mean think about it is almost like they have to admit a failure that they were a bad dad. They think, ” I’m a bad dad. I’m going to come in here and kind of do remedial help. “We kind of have to admit

Brad Burrow (00:42:17):
That.

Lee Bramlet (00:42:18):
Yeah, kind of. That’s their mindset coming in. We start out with a vision, what do you want it to be? And then we get into it. How were you raised? That’s how you were raised. How do you want to raise your kids? We take them through step by step to realize, I don’t want to have the same family that I had. I want to have something different. With God, we can be a new creation and do something different. You see the graduation, that’s after 15 weeks or after 30 weeks or 26 weeks. That’s after a long time. But initially there’s an uncomfortableness of it and almost I’m going to do this because I’m at the bottom, but I want to get better. And we find sometimes that even in churches. The people, the men they want to come, but it almost like if I go to that, that admits that I’m a bad dad.

(00:43:06):
But that’s not true, but that’s what the men bring into the course.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:43:09):
I had an interesting experience and I reflected that I was teaching for another organization before the founding of Fatherhood Foundations and I was teaching on conflict resolution. All of my students were ex- convicts. In fact, the organization existed for the purpose of accommodating individuals coming out of prison and getting them oriented and perhaps preparing them for employment. And my job was to come in and teach. So I’m teaching on conflict resolution. One of the students arrived late and walks in and somewhat disruptive and walking in late, sat on the front row and then after a few minutes raised his hand and basically said these words,” I don’t need this conflict resolution business. “I said,” Oh, really? “And he said it to me in front of the entire class and he went on to say this, ” Hey, if I’m having conflict with my woman, man, I just go find me another woman.

(00:44:11):
“Those were his very words. And when he said that the class just roared, this guy all of a sudden he was cool and I just find you another woman. There’s plenty of fish in the sea.

(00:44:23):
And everybody’s laughing except for me. I’m looking at this guy who disrupted the class by coming in late and now he’s announcing that I don’t need this. And so I told the client,” Hey, everybody calm down, calm down. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. “I said,” First of all, how many of you have kids? “I wasn’t prepared for the response because it was as if we had rehearsed the response. The response was this … It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but it seemed to me every head went down plop and every hand went up in that order. I just asked,” How many of you have kids? “And every head went down and every hand went up. Okay, put your hands down. Next question. How many of you want your kids to end up just like you and nobody moved. And I waited for a second.

(00:45:24):
There was a pregnant pause and finally I said,” That is why we’re talking about conflict resolution. Are there any questions? “And there were no questions. And that guy that came in later was no longer Mr. Cool because they were faced with the reality. I have brought kids into the world and they’re going to be destined to repeat what the blunders I’ve made if I don’t learn something.

Brad Burrow (00:45:50):
Yeah. That’s amazing.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:45:52):
That was very dramatic.

Brad Burrow (00:45:54):
Yeah. So we talked about where you guys are and some of the impact of what’s going on. What are the needs? I mean, obviously this is a huge, huge need and to be able to accomplish this, you got to have resources. No question. So we’re going to talk about the auction, but what’s the goal for trying to grow fatherhood foundations? What’s your vision?

Pastor Don Lewis (00:46:24):
Well, you got to consider something as basic fundamental. We are not- for-profit. We’re non-profit. We have what’s called a 501. That’s a status. We don’t exist for the purpose of profit. But in reality, you have a number of individuals, you have two people who are full-time employed by Fatherhood Foundations. The other individuals are volunteers and they receive a stipend for the classes that they teach. We need to have resources so we can provide those stipends and also for the salaried individuals.That’s the reality. As a not- for-profit organization and we go into rehabilitation homes, we go into the prison system. We’re now also at a crisis pregnancy center. We need resources. We need to be able to appeal to individuals who can be trained to be facilitators and to be able to compensate them for their services. That’s the basic need.

Lee Bramlet (00:47:25):
Well, Brad, we talked about the facilitation as our secret sauce. In order to get people facilitated or trained for each, it runs between 700 and $1,200 to get them trained to be a facilitator. That’s not down in the curriculum. That’s just getting them trained to walk in in the class. Exactly. And then we mentor them. We let them teach a few classes with us before they teach so that they’re confident. And typically we’ll have two men in a class or two people teaching in the class. So it’s an expense, but I think that’s the key to our secret sauce, that and God speaking to the lives of the men, but the fact that you use the highest level of adult education to facilitate that room.

Brad Burrow (00:48:08):
So we have an auction coming up. I know we had an event here last year, or was it October when that was? That was so fun. It was great. It was great. That was a fun event. But we’ve got an auction coming up on June 20th. And tell us a little bit about that. I know Lee, we had the list of some things that are going to be auction items, but that’s going to be a really cool event to fundraise to help propel the program and build it and keep it moving forward. Talk about that a little bit at the Thompson Barn in Oletha on June 20th. So what are some of the things?

Lee Bramlet (00:48:43):
Well, we’re going to have some raffles. We’ve got a Kansas City Chief’s football authorized by them. We’re going to raffle that off, but we have auction items. We have a photo shoot with the renowned photographer. Is it Kia Bondurant? Kaya Bondurant. Kaya Bondurant. From Bondurant

Pastor Don Lewis (00:48:59):
Studios.

Lee Bramlet (00:49:00):
Bonhart Studio. They have done this for a long time. Just exceptional, Brad. They took our pictures 20 years ago. It’s hanging our wall now. It’s the best better than used to go Ola Mills or anything. They’re the absolute best we’ve ever gone to.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:49:17):
25 years ago for us. And they’re hanging on our walls.

Lee Bramlet (00:49:21):
I mean, they’re really good Brad. Back

Brad Burrow (00:49:23):
When they used film.

Lee Bramlet (00:49:24):
Yeah. It’s exceptional. Brad was like, you have a gifting, you have good in getting people drawn out in conversations. She’s gooding at people to look natural and content. It’s just a gift and to capture it on photography, it’s life changing. We also have a catered dinner with our own founder, Pastor Don Lewis. You get a catered dinner with Pastor Don.

Brad Burrow (00:49:47):
That’s probably

Lee Bramlet (00:49:47):
Going to work. To have conversations. Thousands

Brad Burrow (00:49:49):
And thousands of dollars.

Lee Bramlet (00:49:50):
Oh my gosh. If you’ve ever had a conversation you ever wanted to talk to a pastor Don about, this is your chance.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:49:55):
And we’re going to eat good too. Yeah. All right.

Brad Burrow (00:50:00):
Mexico trip, I saw you.

Lee Bramlet (00:50:01):
We have a Mexico trip. Fortnite, for two, all inclusive to Mexico, you can pick your place. You want to go Cozumel, Riviera Maya, Porto Verato or Cabo. You got to pay your own airfare, but you get down there, you get an all- inclusive resort. So that is just, you’re going to love that. We also have things like a father-son, daughter carpenter experience. We’ve got a master carpenter that will help you build a woodworking project. If you like to camp, we have an experienced camper up to five people and they’ll take you outdoors, provide all your tent and everything and guide you to a camping experience. So these are some of the things we’re auctioning off. They’re all things that one way or another help fathers engage more with their kids.

Brad Burrow (00:50:43):
Yes. Yep. And rumor has it. We have a pretty renowned barbecue guy cooking barbecue for that. That is

Pastor Don Lewis (00:50:49):
Accurate.

Brad Burrow (00:50:49):
Yeah. Former Jackstack guy.

Lee Bramlet (00:50:52):
Pitmaster. Yeah, Pitmaster. The brisket, I don’t know if you like Jack Stacks. I love their baked beans with the burn-ins in them. Master Don’s little bit of favor of Cheesy Corn. So we’re bringing the A game on barbecue.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:51:07):
Yes, we are.

Brad Burrow (00:51:08):
Yeah. So that event’s going to be a really cool event and we’re doing some videos obviously for the event and that will play that day.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:51:16):
And it’s going to be the day before Father’s Day. We picked that day because we want to just celebrate fathers. And something that is very important to us is that there’s a lot of negativity regarding men and there’s a lot of negativity regarding boys and we want them to be and feel celebrated. And so we chose that date as the day before Father’s Day, Sunday. It’ll be Saturday and we’ll begin in the morning and through noontime and forest eating and what have you, but we want to celebrate dads.

Lee Bramlet (00:51:54):
And also we’ve got an event coordinator working with us named Cinnamon and her expertise is building these walls where you take photography moments. So at Thomson Barn, there’s this huge steel wall and she’s going to put something up there, very masculine that you can take your kids and take your picture there. I think you’re just going to love it. I think you’re just going to love it. I would agree. I would agree. You just take your own iPhone, take your phone, whatever you got and they’ll take your pictures and you walk away with it and you got a photo with your kids. For sure.

Brad Burrow (00:52:22):
And anybody that hears this podcast, they can support, they can go by all means by all means. There’s a place on the website to

Lee Bramlet (00:52:28):
Go. Yeah. It’s fatherhoodfoundations.com. You just go there and you can sign up.

Brad Burrow (00:52:32):
Sign up for it. So talk about next steps after that. So we talked about needs a little bit. Obviously there’s financial needs, but really you need more facilitators.

Lee Bramlet (00:52:45):
We need more facilitators. And honestly, Brad, this is all done by prayer. Just like we started this here, right? This was not something we just went out and did it. Say, God bless my plans. God, what do you want? Where’s the need? And let’s go out and be your hands and do it. So the same thing. We can only advance through prayer. We need people that will pray for us.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:53:04):
That’s true.

Lee Bramlet (00:53:04):
And intercede because if you look at these A scores and you see the issue these men have, that’s a God size problem. And we can do our best. But if God doesn’t show up, if we’re going to keep doing the same thing, the cycle will continue. But with God’s help, the cycle is broken, but we want prayer warriors to enter in that battle with us.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:53:25):
When you turn the news on and you discover there’s been another homicide, which is fairly common,

(00:53:34):
There’s been another shooting regardless of whether the assailant knew the victim or not, another life has been lost. And yeah, the police will do a thorough investigation and hopefully we will apprehend the assailant and try to find out what happened and why, but after it’s all said and done, not only do you have the life loss of that person who was murdered, but you also have a life lost in that the person, the assailant is going to spend probably the rest of his life prison. And you have two families, at least two families that have been dramatically impacted. The family of the assailant, the family of the victim dramatically impacted for the rest of their lives. I will argue that we don’t have the right to just sit back and do nothing. We don’t have the right to sit back and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is.

(00:54:38):
” We do not have the right, particularly what we know today as we … Some of this stuff is so predictable.

(00:54:48):
It’s predictable. We see where these conflicts are. We see who these individuals are that are having conflict. We understand the way they’re raised. There’s enough research to confirm the fact that boys need dads and girls need dads. Girls need dads. Let me just talk about that for just a quick minute. A girl coming into the world today and I love that the movie actress Halle Berry made a saphen. When she discovered that her husband was a philanderer and they were breaking up and she was in an interview once. And the question of the interviewer asked her, “Well, how did you end up with this guy?” Her response was this, “I didn’t have a dad growing up. I didn’t know what to look for. ” Boy, did she capture it?

Lee Bramlet (00:55:42):
Yeah.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:55:43):
I didn’t have a dad. I didn’t know what to look for. And so you have that factor. Then you also have another factor that isn’t talked about enough and that is everyone has what I call an emotional tank and it’s like a gas tank. And when the car is empty of gas, it stops running. Well, in your emotional tank, a girl needs affection, healthy affection. In fact, one of the roles of a dad is to introduce the concept of the opposite sex to the girl in a safe and appropriate environment. And what do I mean? I mean this, that a dad is a man, a girl is a girl. And as my daughter was growing up, I was her source of affection. In fact, she would come to me at times saying, “Dad, I need a hug.” I’d give her a hug. We go out shopping together deliberately.

(00:56:39):
I’m holding hands with her. I’ve been telling her all of her life, “You’re so beautiful on the inside and the outside. God has just gifted me with a beautiful daughter.” I would tell her that.

(00:56:54):
And I would lavish her with affection, appropriate affection. I want to be quick to add. I’m not talking about some indecent, godless, incestuous molestation. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about appropriate affection where I’m touching her on her shoulders, giving her a massage. I take her hand, I put my hand on her cheek and I tell her, “I love you. I love you. You’re such a gift to me. I love you. What was I doing? I was keeping her tank filled so that when she went out to society, particularly when she entered into her adolescence, she wasn’t running on empty. So when a young man stops her on the streets and says, Hey, you want to come home with me? You sure look good. She could comfortably say, well, thank you. My daddy thinks I’m good looking. He’s been telling me that all my life.

(00:57:45):
Thank you. And no, I don’t want to come home with you. I’m going home to my dad. And I was providing for her an insight as to how you should expect to be treated, how you should expect to be treated by the opposite sex. And if someone approaches you and uses language, terminology and what have you, that’s contrary to the way I’m talking to you, you go the opposite direction. That’s on the roles of a dad. So we got to ask ourselves the question, how is it that so many are having children out of wedlock and homes are not intact. Much of that has to do with the fact that we now have a society of women who have not been nurtured by fathers to where they’re not running unempty. I think that needs to be talked about.

Brad Burrow (00:58:36):
Yeah. That’s a great point.

Pastor Don Lewis (00:58:39):
And I think it’s sensitive, but I think it needs to be talked about. The proper place of affection of father to his daughter. And of course this affection between fathers and sons. I hug my boys still. I mean, they’re all grown bigger than I am. They come over to the house, I give them a hug and I tell them I love them. I tell them I love them yet.

Brad Burrow (00:59:03):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, I want to go ahead and wrap up guys. This has been awesome. So how can somebody find you? Put the website out there again.

Lee Bramlet (00:59:14):
Yes. Fatherhoodfoundations.com. Yes.

Brad Burrow (00:59:19):
Yep. And the event’s coming up again on the 20th. Yes, it is. The Thomson Barn and Oletha. Yes. It’s 11:30. Yeah. You can find that information on the website. So that’s available and they can register and get involved. If you just want to support, then they can just support probably through the website as well as a way to give and get involved. You want to volunteer all those things. Yes. Please contact us. It’s really fun for me to see where it’s gone from the conversations at breakfast to the first meeting to seeing this really starting to take off. Pretty amazing. It is. Pretty amazing to see that. God has been

Pastor Don Lewis (00:59:56):
Good. God has been so great, so good. And it’s So providential.

Brad Burrow (01:00:01):
Yeah. So thanks for joining us everybody. Be sure to share this content, put it out, share this event that’s coming up. Come into the auction, come be a part of it. Tell people about this. If you want to serve, reach out, go through the training, do all those things. This is a big, big deal and something that’s going to change the path of our city in some ways. So we thank you for joining us and we’ll see you on the next podcast. This has been In A World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us and be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow Real Media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn so you never miss an episode.