Dream Chasing 2.0

Main photo: students pose on the MIT campus. Above: At Duke University

The Original concept for the Dream Chasing initiative began in the summer of 1999 and was born out of the chance encounter of the Solomon Community Temple United Methodist Church (SCTUMC)  youth leader—Randy Crump- an Electrical Engineer and his wife Joann – a Social Worker turned accountant, and a bright and engaged group of African American high school teens at their church. Randy and Joann were then and are today small business owners who had weathered several personal challenges, including being teen parents and marrying prior to turning twenty. The Crumps both graduated from their perspective colleges in four years with bachelor degrees. Their only child –grew up in Milwaukee’s inner City, attended public school in grades K-9th grade and graduated from the prestigious University School of Milwaukee with honors at age 18. After witnessing their son’s acceptance into Harvard and several other prestigious universities across America and ultimately attending Duke University where he obtained his undergraduate degree and law degrees they knew the children from their church and their parents simply lacked “vision” for what was possible in their lives.
After mentoring the 13 teens from church on career options  using local African American guest speakers who were working in the fields of: Law/ young attorneys, and law enforcement/police officers  
; medicine/ nurses and doctors; education/ teachers/professors;  elected officials and government administrators; construction workers and more; the youth raised money for travel by washing cars, selling coupon books, community tasks and selling church dinners.  The Crumps then donated thounds to close the financial gaps that remained.

100% of proceeds raised from 2000-2008 were spent on teens with all adult efforts coming from volunteers.
In the spring of 2000 The Crumps piloted the church's 15 passenger van loaded with 13 teens initially on  6 single day trips to local colleges within 100 miles of downtown Milwaukee (UW, UWM,MSOE University, Beloit College
; then Northwestern University, , UIC, and DePaul in Chicago, IL).Later that summer the group out on a 10 day cross country journeyin  the van -- full of teens and luggage to: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Georgetown, Howard, Hampton, Duke, UNC, Purdue and more. In total, travelling more than 3,000 miles in 10 days. The first two cross country trips were in the 15-passenger van in 2000 and 2002, carrying 20 unique students (13 then 7 new teens). Unique to mean, students attended both trips were only counted once. After vast community encouragement to expand the student count for the tours, the effort continued in 2004, 06 and o8 in an air-conditioned motor coach -- dubbed the “mobile classroom” with 34-38 teens. The 70 hours on the motor coach were used to entertain, educate and motivate the teens. Students watched positive themed mainstream movies, listened to prescreened pop music; completed workbook oriented training videos from John Maxwell – “Today Matters”; Steven Covey’s “seven habits of highly effective teens” and more.

Sadly the Dream Chasing effort fell victim to the great 2008 recession and ended before a 2010 tour could take place.
In total 107 unique students participated in the Dream Chasing initiative and the results were amazing, yielding:11 healthcare professionals (nurses, respiratory specialists, Pre-med students, and pharmacy specialists; two construction workers; two Milwaukee Police Officers; 3 attorneys; 9 engineers, architects, IT and Coding professionals;
Tody from this group there are16 working business professionals from account executives, HR professionals, insurance managers; project managers and more; One Peace Core volunteer with an MS in Finance working in Africa to teach farmers how to be more profitable; 12 teachers in K-12 education and a one professional scientist with an MS in Physics and one PhD candidate/ college professor.
Dream Chasing 2.0 is beginning now with local college tours in 2017. The plan is to have a national tour in 2018.
Please give what you can to help re-ignite the dreams of young people in our community.
The total cost of Dream Chasing is nearly $2,000 per child for the 18-month period.  Our goal is to take 40 inner city teens

Please give what you can.  Student travel starts this summer with local tours .  Our national trip planning cannot begin unless we know we have funds.  A majority of the funding needed by July 30, 2017.

Your donation will go to Grandesco Solutions a federally recognized 501(c) 3 nonprofit organiztion.