A few years ago, a little after my son was born, a friend/former colleague, of mine called me kind of out of the blue. He told me that he had a young non-profit that was doing very well and helping a lot of people. He then asked me if I’d be interested in working with him on developing programs for his non-profit, Malecare Inc. I agreed. The pay was low ($0.00), but the work has always been fulfilling. Eventually I told him I wanted to work on dispelling stereotypes about the “black dad” and he said what he always says: “do it.”

A little over a year ago I started podcasting daddy advice, and a little under a year ago I started blogging. This is the result. I have made lots of friends, and hopefully I have challenged some ideas about black fathers. Thank you all for reading and for the tons of encouragement. I’m not done yet though, you guys can’t get rid of me that quickly.

I said all of that to get to my sobering point. The soul of my friend’s work is support groups for men with, and survivors of, prostate cancer. Doing this work is significant because no one before him had ever done it before. People like to throw around the term innovative, especially in non-profit, but he truly is an innovator. To this day his nationally replicated groups are run by licensed Social Workers, which he also is, and psychologists, helping many men and their families cope with male cancers.

In an effort to continue the mission, Malecare has launched a new blog called Advanced Prostate Cancer authored by Joel. His first post went up a few days ago and he promises to post as often as he can. What he has to say is meant to bring awareness to a disease that is taking the lives of men, many of whom are dads, worldwide. If you get a chance you should stop by his side of the blogosphere and say hi.