About Us: History

DreamsWork had its unofficial beginnings in the mid-1990s when Trinity United Methodist Church of Elkhart began to provide growing numbers of tutors (eventually the number swelled to 70) for students at Hawthorne Elementary School. With the aid of a well-qualified steering committee, an Elkhart businessman who had been a mentor with Hawthorne students for four years established DreamsWork in 2001. The DreamsWork Board of Directors had its first meeting in March 2001; the first students (fourth-graders) and their mentors were selected in the fall of 2001.

The Dreamswork vision is modeled in some ways after the I Have a Dream Foundation, first implemented in Harlem in 1981. It builds on IHAD’s strengths, but the Elkhart program seeks to modify certain IHAD features, primarily by working in an ongoing way with a limited number of students in a given fourth-grade class, and then repeating the program year after year at the school so long as funding can be secured.

Like an acorn, DreamsWork started small. But like the giant oak whose branches soar upward, the sky’s the limit for children in this program—and for DreamsWork itself.