As Driven to Reach Excellence and Academic Achievement for Males (DREAAM) celebrates their fifth year of excellence we want to acknowledge their commitment to creating a community impact as the 2020 Business of the Year Award recipients for Community Engagement.
Since the founding of DREAAM, they have impacted over 250 men.
“A DREAAMer for us starts at age five and ends at twenty-four,” Tracey Dace, the owner of DREAAM said. This is unique as similar programs stop at 18 or 19.
DREAAM offers after-school programs for children under 18, a meal service program, job training, life coaching for the young adults and day programs for teenagers who are enrolled in alternative educational services, earning an online diploma or GED.
“DREAAM uses an opportunity pipeline framework for its programming and impact,” Dace said.
“When we think about it, support with academics, mentoring, behavioral health and helping young people build the skills so they can be successful, are all needed for a young man leaving high school and still trying to figure out college, life and careers. We wanted to build this pipeline.”
Listening to Dace speak so passionately about DREAAM and what he hopes it will do for the current youth was amazing to hear.
But, he wasn’t done.
“When the pandemic started to become aggressive, we converted a lot of our family engagement to virtual,” Dace said. “We have virtual parent meetings, family STEM nights and game nights.
We were delivering meals to families three times a week in partnership with two churches. At one point we were delivering about 200 meals a week.
We try to be connected and aware of what ways we can support our families and then find the resources to do that.”
Dace, refers to the DREAMers and their families as family to the organization.
Not only does DREAAM have family engagement, but they also have community engagement.
Just when it seemed like everything was shutting down, Dace and the hard-working volunteers of DREAAM were stepping up, opening DREAAM Big Learning Centers.
DREAAM provides its volunteers with training, background checks, coaching and support throughout their time. They are looking for virtual volunteers and some in-person volunteers.
Interested parties can go to the website www.dreaam.org and submit a volunteer contact form or they can email volunteer@dreaam.org someone will reach back out to you.
“We are very grateful for the support we have in Champaign County and I just want to say as a community we can definitely come together and make a difference for our children and our families,” Dace said. “I’m just happy that DREAAM can be a part of a community that really cares for others.”
Photos by Jay Schubert
