Looking for more quality time with your kids? This dad can help.

Chattanooga is known for being clean, for having the fastest internet. I want Chattanooga to be known as the best place for families.

Name: DeAngelo Jelks

Age: 38

Hometown: Atlanta

Profession: Owner of Jelks Property Management; creator of Chattanooga Dads

DeAngelo Jelks, 38, talks about the beginnings of ChattDads, a new non-profit that aims to help strengthen families.

At a very young age, DeAngelo Jelks vowed to be everything his father wasn't: He vowed to be present. When Jelks' first wife got pregnant, he was there for the birth. His son, DeAngelo Jr., took his first steps holding his father's hands. But Jelks' military service meant he had to be away often, and for long periods of time. Eventually, the strain became too much and he and his wife divorced.

Ten years after the birth of his first son, Jelks got a second chance. He and his new wife had a little girl, Victoria. A baby boy, Tyson, came two years later. But life hadn't gotten any easier. Now in the Army Reserves, Jelks was working to become a police officer.

With two jobs that demanded a lot of his time, energy and spirit, he recognized how hard it was to equally apply himself when he was at home and carve out truly meaningful moments.

In January, Jelks founded Chattanooga Dads to help provide activities and support for families across the area, his included. There are weekly activities like Monday morning Bible studies and weekend family hikes. Jelks' first big event welcomed father figures and young girls to a special dance, and a father/son campout is coming up. In September, he'll offer a GED prep program to help provide the tools for a better life, and he's developed a school mentoriship program, acting as a father figure in local classrooms.

His ultimate goal is to replicate the program in cities across the country. He's already seeing the payoff in his personal life. Naturally, his relationship with his children, ages 7 and 5, has grown stronger. So has his relationship with his wife. And with his own father.

» I was going to be gone for almost a month, and my daughter ran up to me, jumped on me, crying, and said, "All I want for my birthday is for you to get out of the Army." That's when I thought that there are probably a lot of other fathers who, for one reason or another, have to be gone a lot.

» I think she was 1 month old when I graduated from the police academy, so for her whole life I've either been in emergency services or the military. And at times when I was home, it felt like I was baby-sitting or the disciplinarian. I knew there had to be a way to have more substantive interactions with my family.

» It's so easy to fall into those dysfunctional dynamics.

» If I feel this way, I know lots of others must be too. I wanted to create something that made it easy for fathers to spend time with their children and spouses.

» Think of a man's brain like a Tic Tac Toe board. I can manage all nine squares, but if I just have to focus on that one square, I can really rock it out.

» I have a degree in child and family development and of the four years of study, the most important concept I got from that program was Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We as an organization can host bouncy-house days at the park but that's not meeting primary needs. So it's not just about fun, but the important repair of the relationships between father and children, husbands and spouses, which in turn helps kids in the long term.

» As a juvenile probation officer, a lot of times it was very frustrating. Don't get me wrong, the kids were misbehaving and did "stuff." But a lot of their behavior stemmed from environmental influences - a lot of times, the absence of a parent.

» I didn't grow up in a traditional household. It was mostly women. I saw a lot of violence, drugs and incarceration. Even at 9 years old I knew I didn't want that for myself.

» From my own life, my mom was there but my dad wasn't. And as a probation officer, I would say that 98% of the time, if there was a parent there, the mom was the one who showed up.

» We did fun stuff - vacations, birthday parties, that kind of stuff - but some of my most salient memories are simple things: walking with my father to school; racing to the house and thinking he was the fastest man in the world. It's a testament to how important those relationships are.

» Something I decided to do at one of the events is open up the mic. I chose to tell my daughter what she means to me and why I appreciate her. Slowly, one by one, they started to come up, and before I knew it, every man had gone. Then one kid came up and decided to share the opposite. There were tears.

» One dad came up to me and said, "I've taken my family to Disney World and all these other places, but my daughter said that was the greatest night of her life."

» I've been in combat, I've led soldiers. But I still find delight sitting at my parents' feet. Even Jesus himself needed his dad to say "I'm proud of you."