- I went from homeless to woman of distinction in five years.

And I'm just like, what did I do to deserve this?

I merely followed my heart.

I am ChaQuana MacIntyre.

And I am the president and founder of Family Rise Together.

Our story, our history has always been told by someone else and I wanted to be a part of the solution.

And the problem that I wanted to focus on when I originally started this organization was fatherhood.

I wanted to be a part of the solution to help fathers who were reintegrating back into the community.

I wanted to look at it differently of how do we reintegrate them back into their lives, into their children's lives, particularly.

And it came from a place of having a stepfather but not having my own father, knowing that historically the data shows that a child who does not have a father, female or male has a higher rate of suicide, pregnancy, mental health issues.

You know, the list goes on and on and on.

One of the problems for these children that I'm serving through child protection services is the lack of fatherhood, then why don't we have more programs to attract fathers to get them back on track to help them be what we need them to be so that the children that we're serving have a better chance of not having to go to jail, not having to go through child protection services.

We have fathers who feel like the system looks at them as a child support check or only a check.

And so their opinions and their values and their children's lives, who they want to be a part of didn't matter if they didn't pay the $50.

So the $150 or the $300, whatever it was that the system was telling them that they needed to pay to the point we have made policies and laws that said if you don't pay this child support, you're going to jail.

That does nothing for the community I'm serving.

When we have a father who's doing his very best and then we throw him in jail.

We take away his license and we make him work three times harder to be a part of a child's life that he helps create.

And so I started the Devoted Dads program.

We were granted a grant through the National Father Institute to serve fathers.

My motto is we are no longer going to beg for 50 cents.

When I can teach you how to go make $5 and get the tax benefit of the $5 that you make.

It's a very simple formula when I say it like that but obviously there's a lot more work to actually becoming an entrepreneur, but that was the push.

I was on welfare when I started this.

It was perfect timing to say, God, I trust you.

I have four children, two sons, two daughters.

And I'd said to him, I said, if you trust me, trust me to hold on to God's coat jacket and just hold on.

So to expect them to understand, hold on to my coattail as I hold onto God's coattail is obscene now I'm thinking about it.

But we did it.

I wish I would have did the work a lot sooner.

And what I mean by that is I wish I would have did the healing work much sooner.

I wish I would've seen where my childhood traumas was affecting my ability to be the best parent I can be.

In the black community I don't know how many people are having that conversations but I needed my children to know that I was not their enemy.

The world is harsh enough for young black men.

And so I needed them to know that I was always going to be somebody that they can come to.

And that came with a lot of healing.

My kids' grandmothers have been huge in my life.

I've just been blessed with a lot of things, and a lot of people, my ancestors who are always supporting me and always around.

Like, I just feel their spirit pushing me to do well and to do better and helping me make my decisions.

I have one rule and it's always to make it home.

It helps me decide what battles I'm gonna pick, what wars I want to fight.

As a mother, as a grandmother, as a single parent, and even just for myself, I have to make it home.

Everybody deserves a chance.

And I often see greatness in people before they see it in themselves.

And I have seen plenty of hurt.

I've seen and experienced plenty of trauma.

That is a huge one for me is making sure I see the good in people and making sure I get home every night.

I do believe that Family Rise Together has a formula that is working.

- [Narrator] Funding for Intersections is brought to you by the Arts and Cultural Heritage fund and the citizens of Minnesota.