The Beginning of the Dream

The Beginning of the dream came about because of our dream of helping people who have already helped themselves, people in poverty with high potential who against all odds had the ability to escape poverty and change that condition into possibility.  Several people, religious faiths, and companies have come together  to realize the dream.  Please take a look at our list of board members and allied organizations.

We have the opportunity this year to work with Carmella, who a few years ago was a 14-year old runaway who arrived here in Austin to the Salvation Army on a bus.  Fast forward a few years and Carmella is about to graduate from St. Edwards University with a degree in social work.  She is interning at LifeWorks, the agency who originally gave her the boost.

This is an opportunity help someone escape the bonds of poverty to a life of possibility and service.

Every month the Dream Come True Foundation is working to help Carmella with her basis expenses so she can continue studying.  Just a small online donation, from $1 to $100 or more, which you can make on this blog, takes Carmella a little closer to her graduation in May 2010.  Please consider a donation, or it would be a greater blessing to make a small monthly commitment.

Carmella faced huge odds and anyone would have agreed that it wasn’t possible.  She was an illiterate, fourteen year old runaway teenager who arrived in Austin, Texas and landed in the Salvation Army facilities where she found a bed and food.  A very good person told her that she didn’t belong in the temporary facility, to go to LifeWorks, a non-profit that helped her begin her foundation for the future.  While working on her GED in difficult circumstances, she found out that she was not ignorant, as she had been led to believe, but that she simply lacked education.  Carmella graduated at the top of her class, and now knew she was in fact an intelligent person with high potential.  On a campus tour of St. Edwards University, she dreamed of being educated with “the rich kids.”   It was a real dream, and totally beyond her reach.

The next few years were not easy.  She became a single mom, had two wonderful children, but was now locked in poverty.  Carmella landed a scholarship to St. Edwards University to pursue a degree in social work.   The scholarship provided tuition, but no money to live on.  She was about to give up her scholarship and her dream when someone at LifeWorks connected her with the Dream Come True Foundation.  The Dream Come True Foundation agreed to help support Carmella and her family as she completes her undergraduate degree.  Today she is seven months away from walking across the stage to receive her degree from St. Edwards in social work.