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William Gibbs helped to instruct his son Joshua as the two worked building part of a wooden playground structure at the Fatherhood Initiative in North St. Louis.

Students from Ranken Technical College and employees from Boeing donated time last weekend to build a playground at the Fatherhood Initiative in North St. Louis. The playground equipment was purchased through a grant with Cardinals Care, the Employees Community Fund of Boeing St. Louis and Old Newsboys.

Many local fathers are separated from their children because of unemployment, mental or physical health issues or through divorce. The Fatherhood Initiative Program provides a place where fathers can spend quality time with their children, so they built a playground on their campus.

The goal of the Fatherhood Initiative, a program of Catholic Family Services, a Catholic Charities Federation agency, is to ensure full involvement of the father in the lives of their children. They help men find gainful employment and assist them with parenting skills and character building. The program currently provides apartments for 35 fathers, and their children regularly visit them there.

Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of St. Louis, is the largest private provider of social services in the state of Missouri. Organized as a federation, Catholic Charities is comprised of eight agencies offering more than 100 programs to assist, on average, more than 140,000 poor and impoverished people annually.

The multimedia story below includes photographs from the playground building event and audio interviews with Tyrone Ford, Interim Director of the Fatherhood Initiative and William Gibbs, a graduate of the Program.