Peter Mutabazi is a single foster parent who shares his journey on social media to show others that families don’t need to be the same race — and to encourage other men to be active dads.
“I really want to inspire others,” he tells PEOPLE before Father’s Day. “Men, we have the responsibility of being in the kids’ lives. It’s not a job for just moms.”
To date, 49-year-old Mutabazi has fostered 34 children and adopted one, and he’s not stopping soon. Currently he has six children — including his adopted son Anthony, 17, and foster kids ages 9, 8, 8, 7 and 21 months — living with him at home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I want to change the narrative,” he says. “Actually, men, we can be dads for kids who need us. Of the 34 kids I’ve [fostered], I noticed that none of them have ever said, ‘I wish we had a mom.’ No one has said that. Why? Because no one had ever had a dad.”
His Own Challenging Childhood
Part of why Mutabazi wants to help kids is the compassion he developed for others during his own childhood in Kabale, Uganda, a small village on the border of Rwanda. The oldest of five children, he was only able to eat every other day, he recalls. At the time, many children in his village died of malnutrition or malaria by the time they were 2.
In the pursuit of a new life, he ran away from at 10, went to a bus station, and bought a ticket to Kampala, a city about 300 miles away, he says: “I never wanted my father to find me. I thought he would kill me.”
He recalls living on the streets for four years before befriending a man who essentially became his foster dad and enrolled him in boarding school. “That changed my life,” he says.
