Achieve to Dream:

We encourage and promote the idea of following your dreams. All success stories are based in a dream plus hard work. In order to reach a dream, you have to optimize your reality to meet the dream. So you cannot achieve your dreams without achieving. Achieve to Dream aims to find purpose in our everyday adventures to reach our dreams!

Dream to Achieve:

Moving forward means finding new dreams. No dream is attainable without achievement, but we cannot move forward with new dreams unless we achieve what we sent out to do. Dream to Achieve understands that we continue to reach our goals in order to create new ones!

Letter from our CEO, Ian Lee:

We have heard throughout our lives the term, “Dream to Achieve.” Not many people have thought of the inverse, “Achieve to Dream.” Many have heard “the sky is the limit” but some have come to understand “the limit’s the sky.”

Achieve To Dream is the understanding that before you can dream, you have to take care of your immediate well being.

It’s hard to dream of a better day when you are hungry. It is hard to think about your long term future when you have no money, and it is difficult to plan what you want to be and college when you have difficulty reading. When we can satisfy our basic needs of life, then we can begin to dream, and when we dream, we need goals, a plan, and a map—and the cycle continues.

Achieve To Dream originated with the idea of bringing equity back to public school students, particularly students from difficult socio-economic backgrounds.

Growing up with a similar background, I understand the complexities of students facing these difficulties, and the idea of Achieve To Dream is based upon my 15 years of experience working with at-risk youth who were mentored by affluent volunteers and seeing the gaps in achievement that came out of the structure of social inequality.

We need your help in replacing the social inequality gap through your time, energy, and effort. Donate to help run our programs. Volunteer to mentor our young people. Sponsor an intern. Share our story with others.

Help us secure our future by meeting young people where they are—beginning their journey as they Achieve To Dream.