Youth telephone has existed for 23 years in Aruba. As everyone knows, the Youth Phone receives calls from different young people on different topics such as bullying, abuse, new cases can talk about many topics that the young person wants to talk about. However, one of the topics that started to come up early on was the connection to one’s own father.
Young people want to have more contact with their father, and their father with them. Seeing this desire of young people, the Youth Phone has developed a project to stimulate fathers who also want to be in their child’s life, but help the father to make this contact better.
Phone for Youth did a research and created a project to stimulate fathers during 10 different nights where fathers come together and talk about their past, why they can’t be in their children’s lives, how they can stimulate communication and what is the difference between a good father and a good couple, according to social worker of Phone for Youth all these have to do with who you are as Best DAD Ever.
Any man/father can participate in the Best DAD Ever project, here there are different moments that talk with the father about his work and give back to his past in the third night the couples participate, be it current couple, ex couple, but the mother of the child can also participate. Alongside this process is a day when the child participates in the Best DAD Ever project.
Although the father is divorced and wants to be a good father it is possible, the child is the one who needs to know what the situation is in real life, this includes whether it is the trauma, how to deal with raising the mother and father first but also what the couple expects from the father. There are also fathers who are not the child’s biological father, but they can also participate in being a good father to the child.
However, the reality is that men often do not talk openly or are not open with women, especially their own spouses. In the Best DAD project Evert is so well integrated and is especially for a man/father who wants to participate. They become a better version of themselves.