Every year Better Dads host our annual free Single Mom Family Camp for approximately 25 single moms and their children. Our goal is to honor, teach, and pamper the moms. All the while their children are enjoying time in the outdoors with positive male mentors doing activities like swimming, rafting, fishing, playing sports, building stuff, and playing with other kids. This three-day, life-changing camps are free to the families who attend. The moms spend time in some very intense classes such as “Choosing Healthy Relationships” and “God’s Love for His Daughters.
I’m a bestselling author and speaker, and I believe families, communities, and our society can grow stronger.
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We use married couples as volunteers. The men “play” with the kids providing much-needed masculine role models, while the wives pray with and for the moms. These mature Christian women are also available to mentor the moms one on one. This also allows both moms and kids to see healthy married couples interact with one another during meals and other times together. We also use young adult church youth groups to work with the kids as they look up to their older peers. If you are an individual, business, or church and would like to volunteer or donate to these powerfully impactful camps please contact us at betterdads@frontier.com“
Even the churches have been reluctant to address the biblical mandate to reach out to widows and orphans in the community – perhaps because they are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.
It is our core belief that the most significant way to make a difference in this world is to change the life of a man. Change a man and you change his children’s lives, and his children’s children’s lives, and so on through the generations. We are attempting to help reverse the trend of men abandoning their families and the plethora of problems associated with it. With a desire to keep this tragedy from manifesting itself in the next generation of men, Better Dads have partnered with various churches and bible colleges to create the Standing Tall Mentoring Program. In this program, we train men to spend time mentoring fatherless boys identified through our “Courageous Moms – Raising Boys to Become Good Men” seminars.
The Standing Tall program’s Purpose Statement is as follows: “To demonstrate our responsibility as men using integrity, courage, and humility in modeling what a man of honor looks like in Christ and in our world.”
Our vision and hope are that, by training boys through mentoring by older males, the next emerging generation of husbands and fathers will take these skills and this vision with them into the world. Churches and ministries throughout the world desperately need solid male leadership. Because of their Standing Tall experience, these new young leaders will not be intimidated about performing this much-needed service. They will have seen the magnitude of the need and experienced the role of a mentor, and they will go forward equipped with a model that works. These will be world changers for generations to come.
In 2001, bestselling author and speaker Rick Johnson founded Better Dads, based on the urgent need to empower men to lead and serve in their families and communities. Rick’s books have expanded his work to include influencing the whole family, with life-changing insights for men and women on parenting, marriage, and personal growth. Inspiring and equipping through innovative multimedia presentations and seminars, Rick’s resources, methods and personal approach have been transforming the lives of men, women, and their families for over ten years.
Rick speaks at many large conferences across the US and Canada and is a popular keynote speaker at men’s and women’s retreats and conferences on parenting and marriage. Rick also speaks at mental health conferences, home schooling conferences, various marriage conferences, and the armed forces. He is a nationally recognized expert in several areas having been asked to deliver papers at venues such as the County of Los Angeles Child Abuse Prevention Conference and the State of New York Fatherhood Conference. Rick’s work with men and fathers was recognized when he was invited to the White House as part of the Champions of Change ceremony in 2012.
Prior to becoming a bestselling author and speaker, Rick was a small business owner for 16 years, owning and operating an environmental engineering firm. He attended George Fox University receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Management and Organizational Leadership, and has a Masters Degree in Education from Concordia University. He is a veteran of the United States Navy, has served on the Board of Directors for several community and business associations, and coaches high school basketball in his spare time. Rick has been featured in many national publications such as New Man Magazine, Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, Christianity Today’s Men of Integrity, Relevant Magazine, Pentecostal Evangel, Thriving Family, and Proverbs 31 Ministries Magazine.