DIRECTOR'S WORDS
Have you ever encountered something so powerful you simply wanted to tell everyone? Have you traveled to a new place, feeling and seeing things you normally would not, and your breath was knocked out of you because you couldn’t believe what you experienced? I can still smell the stench from the Ethiopian dump, where babies are born to no fathers, single mothers dig there to eat, and filthy teens giggle as they find a sugar packet in the mud as their daily treat…their eyes yellow with sickness. I will never see the world the same way and will not sit back and let this continue.
The film, Man Up and Go, represents an important, powerful movement where a bunch of “normal, average guys” from all over America, asked themselves: “How can we make a statement about the lack of fatherhood in the world and what does being a real man actually mean?” They felt an overwhelming call to get out of their comfort zone and do something radical! This group of 30 men could have gone anywhere, but they chose Africa and spent seventeen days in numerous places in Uganda and Ethiopia. They left their families, secure homes and jobs as they were called to “man up” and be fathers to orphans, and to show unconditional love to hurting women and men.
I can still see Mitch, a 6-foot, 6-inch, 250 pound linebacker, gingerly embracing a two-pound baby; we can see Rob, an accountant and father to five, tenderly shaving a leper in his makeshift shack. I can see Roger, removing his shirt to wash a single mother’s feet in a community where the people are considered to be trash by others in their own city. And then there’s Cory, playing soccer with a group of African boys in a children’s prison, laughing and talking with them like they were his own brothers. Or how about Brady, the tough police officer, lovingly hugging two orphaned girls who call him Daddy, tears in his eyes.
Man Up and Go is about igniting the passion for compassion which resides in all of our hearts and then to be inspired deep enough that we act to help others. This film aims to spread the message of loving the fatherless and the importance of fatherhood - so we don't neglect the desperate need and lack of fathers everywhere in the world. (Randy)