By 
SWIPE THROUGH Peter Mutabazi’s Instagram (@fosterdadflipper) and you’ll see the always-smiling dad posing with kids.
Swipe more and you’ll notice the kids change, in number and in who they are—because Mutabazi is a different kind of dad.
The 38-year-old escaped an abusive home in Uganda when he was ten. After he spent several years living on the streets, a family who had been helping him encouraged him to go to school. Then college. After college, he says, he "felt like I had been given so much, and it was time to give back—to participate in someone else’s life and not only to do well but do better."
So in 2015, he moved to Oklahoma and started his own house-flipping business. In 2016, he renovated his own home in preparation to sign up as a foster father.
"The agency was very surprised to have a single guy who wanted to foster," he says. (Single men make up just 3 percent of the adoptions that originate from foster care, according to the Foster Coalition.)
After fostering his first child in 2017, Mutabazi opened his home to 15 other kids, sometimes two or three at a time, from ages four to 17. And he’s used his past trauma to help him do so. "I was one of those kids who had nowhere to go, who was abused and neglected. I knew what I lacked, what I longed for. I could help these kids navigate emotionally, mentally—in ways other people can’t."
CHANGE LIVES NOW
Become a mentor, foster parent, or adoptive parent via adoptuskids.org. Not in a position to foster? Help families who are via togetherwerise.org, which helps provide kids with toys, clothing, and scholarships.
A version of this article originally appeared in the December 2021 issue of Men's Health.
Paul is the Food & Nutrition Editor of Men’s Health. He’s also the author of two cookbooks: Guy Gourmet and A Man, A Pan, A Plan.
