Beaumont Dream Center (dba Dream Center of Southeast Texas)

The Elevate Prize is a good fit for our non-profit as we have a proven track record of success with our current services and programs making an impact in our community. If selected, the funding will be used to elevate our services and programs to the next level to further address, and offer solutions, to issues and challenges facing our community. 

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, we had limited abilities to expand our services and programs to the level needed to reach our goal of "Building a Better Tomorrow, Making a Difference Today!" The Pandemic affected more than our health. It affected our economy by financially crippling households, businesses, churches and nonprofits.

However, we are now making plans to establish new goals in order to make a difference in our community for the next decade. With this Elevate Prize funding, we will meet and exceed these goals by expanding our services and programs. This funding would also allow us to offer vocational training and transitional living opportunities for those in our residential programs, as well as mobile outreaches into the low-income neighborhoods to help meet basic needs, particularly to the families and elderly that do not have transportation.

My story begins when I went on a mission trip to Romania that changed my life. It was there were I knew I had a heart to help people, especially those that were outcasts from society. At that time, I was Programmer Analyst for the State of California, owned my own home and living life to the fullest, so I thought. But there was a stirring in me to find purpose and meaning in life. In 2000, I sold my house, resigned from my career and became a full time volunteer at the Dream Center in Los Angeles. They saw my skill set and hired me as the Director of Gifts In Kind. I met my husband there where we developed a 200 bed program for men and women struggling with addictions and other life controlling issues. In 2016, we came to Texas to start another Dream Center. We acquire an old juvenile detention center that sits on 50+ acres with 13 buildings. We have a big dream and vision for this campus. Our goal is to have this center fully operational with adding various residential programs for human trafficking victims, veterans, emancipated youth and homeless families. 

Even though Texas' unemployment rate dropped March 2021 to 6.9%, it was still double the pre-Pandemic rate of 3.4% of May 2019. Additionally, in the US, more than 20 million people have Substance Abuse Issues. During the shutdown, 55% used more alcohol and 36% using more illicit drugs. Cocaine/Meth overdose deaths increased 26.5%/34.8% respectively. It is widely accepted that mental heath disorders such as anxiety and depression increased during the shutdown. These disorders accounted for 32% of overdoses.

We are seeing more people in need of assistance every month. We provide community outreach to individuals by offering services and/or referrals that fulfill life's basic necessities such as food/clothing. At present we provide monthly to 545 families or 1,614 individuals with approximately 63,532 pounds of food. This number is up from before the Pandemic numbers of 377 families or 966 individuals with 17,202 pounds of food. 

In addition to this we offer long-term residential recovery services to individuals struggling with addictions and/or other life-controlling problems. We currently house approximately 20 individuals overcoming addictions.

In addition to all this, Hurricane Disasters in this region were at a record high with 31 named storms and 2 major hurricanes in our area.

The approach we are taking is different than what has been done before. We acquired an old juvenile detention center on 50+ acres, with 13 buildings and nearly 200,000 square feet. Our goal is to create a facility that is a self-sustaining, one-stop shop for various social services. These services range from poverty alleviation, case-management, counseling, adult education, vocational training, life/soft skills, residential recovery programs, human-trafficking safe house, veteran's group home, group home for kids aging out of Foster Care and transitional living services for graduates of our various residential programs.

Our work is unique in that we are refurbishing an old juvenile detention center into a state of the art one stop social services center. This will become a model for others in our region, state, nation or global community. We are currently raising funds to partner with a consulting firm that specializes in redefining and repurposing old prisons for a more positive impact on society.

We are taking something meant to be designed for punitive justice and redesigning it to be a model for restorative justice. We will provide training/coaching to replicate this same model around the country first, then the world.

We believe the Dream Center has a big impact on humanity because of all the lives that have been changed for the better because of our services and programs. Our SUCCESS recovery program alone, is changing lives for the better. We are seeing lives restored, marriages reconciled, and family members reconnected.

We started the Dream Center by reaching out into our community to find a hurt and heal it, find a need and fill it. In those nearly days we were in the park, in apartment complexes, and in schools...wherever there was a need.

Once we moved to the old prison we expanded our service to include residential recovery and consolidate our outreaches into one location so as to manage growth and not be spread too thin. Our ultimate goal, is to add the original outreaches back into the mix by having several box trucks that can go all over the county meeting the hurts and needs of our community.

We are also refurbishing a 1,500 sf greenhouse to start and operate an aquaponics gardening facility. With this facility fully operational we would be able to grow our own produce as well as have extra for distribution.