Community Economic Development
ABOUT US
Dreams & Visions Community Development is a faith-based organization founded by two ministers and a small group of residents in 2009, who wanted to improve the community by fighting poverty in San Benito County, California. Now doing business as Dreams & Visions Community Economic Development, the organization has changed and grown, but the heart of its mission remains the same. Initially, serving just 50 kids with back-to school backpacks. Today, Dreams & Visions serves Sacramento County and surrounding areas. The mission is to help those who have been forgotten - minorities, youth ages 16-24; school drop outs, low-income, homeless, runaways, those aged out of foster care, and previous incarcerated individuals.
The underlying goal of the activities Dreams & Visions holds is to support the long-term financial success of building wealth through financial literacy, employment, and homeownership. In turn, this creates a stronger community that benefits everybody, regardless of their income level.
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Many nonprofit organizations and local government agencies that helped homeowners have shrunk during the past economic downturn. However the gap left by the disappearance of their services has been filled by Dreams & Visions and other non-profits. In the last 14 months Dreams & Visions has gone through growing pains but we are still here to meet the needs of the community, adapting with the market changes and to meet issues faced by the communities we serve.
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Also in 2010, Dreams & Visions opened a Foreclosure Assistance Center in partnership with Making Home Affordable to provide direct assistance to borrowers seeking alternatives to foreclosure. Before 2008, barely anybody called in asking for help with avoiding foreclosure and such assistance wasn’t in demand. Just a few short years later in 2010, Dreams & Visions provided foreclosure counseling, financial literacy training and college mentoring to hundreds of households.
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And while changing economic times may lead clients to seek issue-specific assistance, Dreams & Visions still stays true to its roots as a neighborhood organization fighting poverty, and creating jobs and building wealth. Making dreams come true for the "forgotten."
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