Marvin & Jeanett Charles
Vision: To provide fathers from all walks of life with the knowledge, encouragement, and support they need to become positive, active and productive fathers.
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Marvin & Jeanett Charles | Mission: To empower and connect fathers who may have lost sight of the rewards that fathering can give.
Vision: To provide fathers from all walks of life with the knowledge, encouragement, and support they need to become positive, active and productive fathers. |
Marvin Charles knows the impact of fatherlessness on children. Until his mother died when he was only 9, Marvin thought his adoptive parents were his biological mom and dad. He moved into a relative’s home and experienced severe abuse. He passed through foster homes and juvenile detention. He turned to the streets to find a home. His life became a tangle of drugs, illegal gains, and emotional losses.
At 42, when he lost his youngest daughter to Child Protective Services, he knew that he could not go on like this. Through his determination to create a family for his children, the help of key community agencies (see Children’s…addiction), and his getting clean and sober, he began to turn his life around. He and Jeanett married while they lived in their respective clean and sober housing.
Jeanett Charles was raised in Seattle by her single father. he raised her by himself at from her age two months to twenty-seven. At that time, there were very few dads raising daughters. She brings to D.A.D.S. her strength and understanding of the importance of fathers. She handles nearly all of the intake paperwork and information gathering despite the ringing phones.
Four years after founding Divine Alternatives for Dads Services, Marvin and Jeanett Charles reach out to men who are disconnected from their own children. At every opportunity, Marvin speaks to individuals and groups—judges, tribal elders, social workers, community members—about the need for each father to take responsibility for his actions, to focus on the child’s needs, and to use his faith in order to find a path home to the hurting child. These dads do not always end up living in the child’s home or marrying the child’s mother, but they do discover the gift of fathering.
In 2003, D.A.D.S. served more than 200 men. While these are chiefly men of color, D.A.D.S. embraces any man who wants to make positive changes in his relationship with his children. Divine Alternatives for Dads Services is not a fathers’ rights group. Its mission is to empower and connect fathers who may have lost sight of the rewards that fathering can give.
Today Marvin and Jeanett live in Seattle, Washington not far from where Marvin grew up. They are raising 4 of Marvin’s 7 children .
Marvin’s dream is to give fatherlessness a face. He wants to move his community towards making the necessary changes to help men believe that they can be the fathers they never had.