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The Father Center helps area dads By SUe Ferrara
RHS runners Melina Johnston, team captain Hailey Cohen and Ella Daly pictured at the Central Jersey Group III sectionals on June 4, 2022.
Johnston medals in Group III finals By RiCH FisHer
Here’s a comment from a Robbinsville High student in discussing her 7th-grade track & field season at Pond Road Middle School. “My friends did it and I just wanted to just try it. I was supposedly a distance runner but I didn’t like running, so I would try to be a sprinter and use practice doing the long jump to get out of running.” Here’s another comment from a Robbinsville High sophomore. “Running helps me, it just makes
me really happy. I just do it because of that. And also I look forward to races because I know if I run hard at practice then I’ll run good in races.” You guessed it. Those quotes both came from Ravens 10thgrader Melina Johnston, who has gone through quite a metamorphosis over the past four years. Apparently her ideas began to change when COVID thwarted most athletic activities and there was really nothing to do but run. “I just started running each day
and liked it more and more,” Johnston said. “And then I just loved running farther and farther each day.” That love transcended into an outstanding spring track season for Johnston, who had struggled with health and confidence issues the first part of her high school career. But after winning a few races at the beginning of the spring, she began feeling right and made it all the way to the NJSIAA Meet of Champions in the 3200. See JOHNSTON, Page 10
In 2008, Karen Andrade-Mims, then a longtime board member for New Jersey’s oldest nonprofit, was asked to take the helm of the organization. She imagined she had been chosen as the next leader to steer the organization into the future. Instead, she was told by board members that they wanted her to manage an orderly shut down of programs, and ultimately, to dissolve the nonprofit. The organization was called the Union Industrial Home for Destitute Children of New Jersey, and had been in existence since 1859–so by 2008, the organization was almost 150 years old. Andrade-Mims wasn’t ready to let the organization fade away, especially under her leadership. Instead, with some guidance and thought, she led the transformation of the nonprofit by re-focusing its mission on helping fathers—and by extension, their children—to live better lives. And thus, after a rebranding, Trenton is now home to The Father Center. The Father Center currently runs two programs: Operation Fatherhood, which started in 1993; and WorkFirst NJ, a program The Father Center manages on behalf of Mercer and Burlington counties. The men who land on the doorstep of The Father Center come for
one of two reasons, and enter one of those two programs. Operation Fatherhood helps men who are behind in child support payments. Men entering the WorkFirst NJ program receive financial assistance from the state, funding which only lasts five years, so WorkFirst NJ helps them reach financial independence. In both cases, the men need to ultimately find employment. What path they take to reaching that goal depends on the person. Some participants want to earn a high school diploma, AndradeMims said, and The Father Center can help them achieve that goal through a program at Mercer County Community College. Others want to go directly to work, but need skills. Those men can participate in a program called Bridges to Success which is a short-term credentialing program. The Father Center addresses needs with virtual programs which participants access through the center’s computer lab. But two programs–one to train forklift drivers (NJ Forklift) and CDL license training happen off site. The Father Center has an interesting history. In 1859, 18 Presbyterian women came together to create an organization that would serve the needs of children whose parents could no longer take care of See FATHERS, Page 8
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