Dads on Duty

Security guards and local police were at a loss about how to deal with the gang violence that was rampant in a Shreveport school, where detention and even arrests weren't enough to curb the violence. So a group of dads stepped up, committing to being present at the school every day. Now there hasn't been a fight in over a month, andow kids say they love going to school.

They call themselves "Dads on Duty," replete with sweatpants, gas station coffee, and dad jokes worth rolling your eyes at. They fist bump students in hallways, providing a fathering gauntlet that is deterring fights and decreasing gang activity. "Not everybody has a father figure at home – or a male, period, in their life," one of the dads told CBS News.

Clearly, this crisis in Shreveport required more than good intentions. It required fathers, because God created dads to do just this kind of thing. I love how these dads took stock of the cultural moment and acted on four simple questions: What good can we celebrate, what is missing that we can offer, what is broken that we can fix, and what evil needs to be opposed?