O

ne of the tenants of good column writing is to write about a variety of subjects.

I’m going to break that rule this week to talk about an event I covered Thursday.

Alabama Teen Challenge held its annual fundraising banquet at the Carl C. Morgan Convention Center in Selma.

During the program, Teen Challenge’s rally team performed a skit called “Reality.”

It was chilling to hear these young men talk about the lives they lost due to drug and alcohol addiction.

They talked graduating at the top of their high school, athletic scholarships as well as wives and children — all things they lost or had taken away from them due to their addiction.

Life doesn’t get much more real than that.

Though some spoke about coming from loving homes, others talked about coming from broken homes, of never knowing or having fathers in their lives.

I wrote a few weeks back about working a Kairos Prison Ministry weekend at Donaldson Correctional Facility near Bessemer.

I’ve volunteered at the prison for more than a year now. For fear of repeating myself, I won’t dwell on the weekend, but the inmates there come from all backgrounds and walks of life.

However, once I get to know an inmate, you will find, more times than not, a broken home and a common factor of missing fathers.

I’ve met men my age, in their late 20s or early 30s, who worry about their teenage sons who have already started to have run-ins with the law. It’s a vicious cycle that is hard to break out of.

The National Fatherhood Initiative reports that even after controlling for income, youths from homes without a father had significantly higher odds of incarceration than homes with a father and mother. Young people who never had a father at home had the highest odds.

A Department of Justice survey of 7,000 households revealed that 39 percent of inmates lived in mother-only households and 46 percent of inmates had a previously incarcerated family member. One-fifth, or 20 percent, had a father in jail.  That being said, I know there are many single mothers out there doing a fine job raising their children, but it’s a topic that we should discuss.

I salute the Selma City Schools system for tackling the subject during its inaugural 100 Men Luncheon this upcoming Thursday.

Students will invite important men in their lives to enjoy lunch, while highlighting the importance of positive male models.

The lunch is $3.75 for adults and free for the students, DiChiara said.

For more information about the program, contact parent engagement facilitator Cynthia Perkins at 874-1605.