Venture Description: Project: Dream BIG Provides children experiencing homelessness, children living in poverty, and children that have special needs (physical or mental) with comprehensive and innovative services. Project: Dream BIG is designed to positively impact the emotional stability, intellectual comprehension, physical and mental health, and the ability to build positive relationships within the children we serve. Project: Dream BIG is passionately committed to ending the cycle of homelessness and poverty, and providing children across the globe an outlet to dream BIG!

Venture Origin: For years and years people have always asked me what your passion in life. For the past six years of my life I have been able to answer them unwaveringly, “my passion is to help underprivileged youth in all ways possible and encourage them to dream big dreams and achieve them.” Not until 2006 did I realize that I was speaking Project: Dream BIG into existence. I have worked in public schools as well as tutoring programs for the youth experiencing poverty, I have volunteered in shelters, I have studied the overcrowding issue in public schools in urban areas and the emotional effect a families economic standing may have on a child. With each opportunity I see more, I see the disconnect that happens when mentoring a child and that child goes home into the same environment and nothing changes. It has become obvious to me that the problem runs deeper than that child, it is a family issue. My passion is exuded whenever I talk to anyone I am constantly planning events for the children within the shelters, schools, and poverty areas I work in. I have a belief that society continues to attempt to solve problems through the adults, but that is an incorrect way to do this. The problems must be solved through the child because they are honestly our future. We cannot continue to allow children experiencing poverty and homelessness just slip through the cracks. When we do that we are just welcoming a future with the same problems of the past and I refuse to allow that to happen! This declaration was the beginning of Project: Dream BIG and the beginning of a vision that I soon realized seem to have a positive life of its own.

Innovation: Project: Dream BIG Provides children experiencing homelessness, children living in poverty, and children that have special needs (physical or mental) with comprehensive and innovative services. Project: Dream BIG is designed to positively impact the emotional stability, intellectual comprehension, physical and mental health, and the ability to build positive relationships within the children we serve. Project: Dream BIG is passionately committed to ending the cycle of homelessness and poverty, and providing children across the globe an outlet to dream BIG! Project: Dream BIG receives money through donation, fundraisers and grant money. Unlike many other organizations project: Dream BIG deals with the psychological effects of homelessness, and poverty.

Impact

Impact: “The members of project: Dream BIG are making a big difference in a very short period of time, the organizational impact has been significant. Our residence look forward to the enthusiasm and energy That Project: Dream BIG brings to the environment” ~Bettye Simmons (Facility director at safe haven shelter for domestically abused children) this comment was written on our weekly report sheet for the Project: Dream BIG college chapter program that has been implemented in the Southern Hampton Roads area. We have had a number of positive feed back from our reports as well as grant companies such as youth venture, community partnerships such as The YMCA, and the youth that we work with. Prior to the implementation of project: Dream BIG college chapter program I have completed extensive volunteer experience with Safe Have shelter for domestically abused children, the in sync program and project son shine all within the southern Hampton Roads area. There are many programs in which I have participated but none have provided me with the knowledge, opportunity and social impact on the same level as Project: Dream BIG has within such a short period of time. The community is excited and has made it obvious. The headline of the Hampton university newspaper the script reads: “PROJECT: DREAM BIG INSPIRES STUDENTS”!

Engagement with the community: Project: Dream BIG college chapter program is completely volunteer based and all of our volunteers come from colleges. We have engaged college students and encouraged them to give back, businesses donate toward our organization because they believe in our cause and even the children in our program are giving back. December 9th, 2006 children in our program made 55 Christmas cards for Katrina victims

Impact and engagement progress since launch: Our History Project: Dream Big began as a vision in the summer of 2006. Project: Dream BIG College chapter program trial officially began October 2, 2006. The program began to first work with children from For Kids Inc. Children shelter and eventually branched out to safe haven shelter for domestically abused children, and the YMCA’s Star achievers academy. Within Project: Dream BIG’s first three months they have successfully reached a total of 150 children per week. Project: Dream BIG co-founder, Dominique Steele and Steve Young began the program with a love for children and a vision to encourage children with large circumstances to dream big!

Impact and engagement strategy: Project: Dream BIG seeks to eliminate the growing phenomenon of homelessness and poverty within the southern Hampton roads area by equipping the youth of circumstance with the tools necessary not to fall into the same lifestyle that their parents had. We intend to do this not by belittling the parents but by providing programs for both the parents and the child to partake in. We intend to solve this problem in three different venues. First the project: Dream BIG chapter program for college student volunteers will quickly allow this program to have a national impact by implementing this philanthropic organization on college campus around the nation. This portion of the program was implemented October 2, 2006 and will continue to expand for five years. Second the Dream BIG center will begin in the heart of the city of Norfolk within the next three years and it will provide family services by trained professionals as well as volunteers. The third is the Dream BIG youth group home which will begin also in the heart of Norfolk within the next five years. The Project: Dream BIG chapter program will target the youth outreach program, the community outreach program, and the scholarship fund. All of these programs have already been implemented as of October 2nd, The Dream BIG center will target issues concerning the family and more specifically the youth who are experiencing homelessness and poverty with the use of seminars, tutoring, music lessons, job placement, and much more all of which will begin October 2009. The Dream BIG group home will not only provide a safe environment for children whose parents seek to rid themselves of a serious drug addiction but it will also provide counseling and coping seminars and group discussions which will all begin once the doors are open October 2011.

Awards: Project: Dream BIG recently won 2006 Youth venture/MTVu Grant for being a new and innovative youth led program. Project: Dream BIG's Breakfast with Santa is featured on Hampton University's website and has been featured in News Papers such as Hampton Roads the Voice, and will be featured on Hampton Roads wavy TV 10 January 12, 2007.Project: Dream BIG's Co-founder, Dominique Steele was currently nominated for the YMCA's Volunteer of the year award

Budget

Amount of Youth Venture seed grant: 1,000

Money raised: Project: Dream BIG received our first grant from Youth venture During our starting month of October 2006 and since then we have raised an additional 300 dollars. This money has come from all donations

Creative ways of raising resources: Project: Dream BIG has been very creative in the way that we secure our money and in-kind Donations. We have gone to different businesses in the area and asked for them to sponsor our program. We are currently partnered with the House they can receive a tax deduction for donating to our program.

Strategy

Expansion plan for next 6 months: First the project: Dream BIG chapter program for college student volunteers will quickly allow this program to have a national impact by implementing this philanthropic organization on college campus around the nation. This portion of the program was implemented October 2, 2006

Plans for sustaining the project: Project: Dream BIG is around to stay. Our college chapter program is scheduled to be implemented at five college campuses across Virginia and Our youth Group Home is currently expecting funding from neighboring churches. We have a visionary team who just works on the growth of the program/ evaluation.

Vision for three years from now: The Dream BIG center will begin in the heart of the city of Norfolk within the next three years and it will provide family services by trained professionals as well as volunteers. The Project: Dream BIG Family center provides children and their family with services such as comprehensive and innovative tutoring, music lessons, college seminars, job preparation, homeowner’s seminars and much more. The center will be equipped with a family psychologist, a business apparel closet and much more. The Project: dream Big Family center will service families suffering from homelessness and Poverty. The Project: Dream Big Family center is the second step in project: Dream BIG’s attack on the psychological effects of homelessness and poverty. The program is Split into three sections: Family rebuilding, Parent programs, youth programs.

Project impact: Project: Dream BIG has made a major impact in such a short period of time. There are three different impacts that this will focus on. First, the children within our program are not only excited every time we come around, but they learn as well. The majority of the children that we serve live in children shelters and the facility directors look forward to seeing the Project: Dream BIG members come around. They know that when we are there we are always successful in mentoring, teaching, and engaging the youth. Secondly we have begun a movement to give back to the community. Project: Dream BIG is made up of seventy five Members and forty special project members. Through our program many people have begun other programs such as the Project: Dream BIG read for our future program which has been implemented by Project: Dream BIG’s Civic correspondent Jessica Rivers. Thirdly, Project: Dream BIG has impacted the community and encouraged them to continue to give back. Project: Dream BIG has worked with businesses, news papers, and television stations and has encouraged them to give back to the community because in the Hampton roads area alone 2,500 children are homeless each year. Project: Dream BIG is not only an organization it is a change maker, a positive community builder, and filled with passionate individuals ready to make a difference.

Youth Venture movement - what it means and how you can contribute: To be young, innovative, and passion filled is what it means to me to be apart of the youth venture movement, But that is just the surface. If dive deep then you will realize that to be apart of the youth venture movement means that you have a sustainable vision that begins when you are young and the vision grows and develops and makes a positive impact on society. Being apart of the youth venture movement means that you impact lives and encourage others to do the same. The Project: Dream BIG team is so honored to be apart of such a movement that we promote the youth venture movement where ever we go. Whither it be walking around in the student center with our t-shirts, including youth venture in our monthly news letter, or including them in our press releases. But the largest promotion that we can do is to continue making a difference so that people will continue to come up to us and ask “How did you do that?” And we can proudly begin by saying, “well have you ever heard of the Youth Venture movement?!”

Author:
Dominique
United States
Website: www.projectdreambig.org