"I Have A Dream" Core Components
- Long-Term: Consistent support from no later than third grade through college completion.
- Individualized: Outcome-driven, grade level appropriate services & programming.
- Community Focus: Opportunities for service learning.
- Need Based: Focus on students from low-income communities.
- Inclusive: Including all students in a class, grade, or school, regardless of ability or performance.
- Mentorship: Consistent relationship with a supportive adult.
- Family engagement, regardless of language barriers.
- Guaranteed tuition support for college.
Our Work
The "I Have A Dream" Foundation - New York works to ensure that all young people have the opportunity to pursue higher education and a career of their choice, fulfill their potential, and achieve their dreams. We recruit cohorts of students (whom we call 'Dreamers') from public housing developments and low-income communities regardless of their academic level. Uniquely, we do not drop students off the roster and work with them straight through college and career. The long-term relationships that are developed over this time between Dreamers, their families, staff, and sponsors have an incredible depth and power. Those relationships are combined with expert programming provided during after-school, weekend, and summertime over the course of more than a decade. By helping our Dreamers gain access to real opportunities for growth, we are putting them on a different academic and life trajectory, while having a broader impact on the students' families and the generations that follow.
Mission
The “I Have a Dream” Foundation - New York provides long-term support to children and youth living in under-resourced communities to achieve their full potential, by promoting from an early age, values of higher education and career success, with opportunity guaranteed through financial resources, and other services.
Vision
The “I Have A Dream” Foundation's vision is for all children to have an opportunity to earn a college degree and fully capitalize on their talents, aspirations, and dreams of fulfilling careers and productive global citizenship.