This Master Trainer Institute certification offers practitioners a field-tested guide to working with fathers in providing support, information and motivation in areas of life skills, parenthood, relationships (including exploring marriage and team parenting), and health. This training also offers a proven methodology for training and learning, and assessment tools.

The sessions are organized around five areas of content, as follows:

Module I: Personal Development This Module includes team-building activities and incorporates interactive session on values, manhood and self-sufficiency.

Module II: Life Skills This Module includes skill-building sessions on communication, decision-making, dealing with stress, and coping with discrimination.

Module III: Responsible Fatherhood (Working with Men on Parenting Skills This Module is the heart of the curriculum, focuses on the important role that fathers play in the lives of their children.

Module IV: Relationship Skills Working with Men and Fathers, Relationship Skills for Healthy Marriage and Team Parenting. This Module explores ways to communicate effectively and considers differences in male and female styles of communication;

Module V: Health and Sexuality This Module emphasizes awareness of potential health problems, suggests ways to take charge of one’s own health, replaces myths that men may hold about sexuality and substance abuse with facts, and provides skills for reducing sexual risks.

This Master Training certification offers practitioners a field-tested guide to working with parents in providing support, information and motivation in areas of life skills, parenthood, relationships (including exploring marriage and team parenting), and health. In addition to improving a child’s well-being, the coparenting focus has the potential to increase fathers’ engagement in parenting. The curriculum also offers a methodology for training and learning, and assessment tools.

The curriculum sessions are organized around four areas of content:

Personal Development begins with team-building activities and continues with discussions of values, defining manhood/womanhood, and life skills. Parents are encouraged to consider their own values and how they communicate them to their children as well as messages that society and their own families send them about what it means to be a man/woman and father/mother.

Life Skills includes skill-building sessions on communication, decision-making, and dealing with stress. A key theme here is that the ability of individuals to live satisfying, productive lives depends largely on their effectiveness as communicators and decisionmakers.

Responsible Parenting, the heart of the curriculum, focuses on the important role that parents play in the lives of their children. Topics covered include the roles and responsibilities of mothers and fathers, the impact mothers and fathers each have on the way their children develop, and what to expect from children at different stages of development.

Healthy Relationships further explores ways to communicate effectively and helps participants gain the motivation and skills needed to establish a more positive (functional) relationship with the child's other parent and family. Activities centered around this topic will help parents learn to manage their anger, resolve conflicts and negotiate relationships with others in their lives, particularly those who can support them as mothers and fathers.