February 2022: Join The ConVersation

Fathers, Future Fathers, and Father Figures: Raising strong and resilient children – the challenge of a lifetime – making a world of difference.

A Word from the Founder

With eyes around the world being turned towards Ukraine and streams of women and children fleeing for safety above the flow of bullets and bombs, I am reminded again of how I first came into awareness of human trafficking – reports of organ trafficking of Sudanese refugees, children, fleeing war. There are men and women in this beautiful world of ours who look for vulnerability wherever it exists to exploit. Wars, along with death and destruction, produce an excess of conditions that are the dreams of traffickers and predators. Already porn producers are posting the number one sought after images and videos are of Ukrainian women! Traffickers and predators of all stripes take advantage of the hurt and injured, and those who become buyers of the bodies, the hearts and the labor of those exploited, suffer the con, the lie that promises what it can’t deliver.

Father-Con sheds light on the need for fathers to set things right. Fathers aware, engaged, present, are the first front line to prevent a whole host of horrors that are landing hard and heavy on our children. Fathers never stop being fathers, they just stop acting like them. And the need of children for their dads doesn’t end, it just turns into a need for others to fill. As Dr. Meg Meeker says, as parents “Nothing you say or do is neutral.”

Patrick Erlandson, Founder: Father-Con, and See it. End it. Film & Arts Festival