Have A Dream

Project Coordinator

I Have A Dream Foundation
E. Palo Alto, CA

If every kid in America had a Sister Georgi to help him or her get through life, boy what a wonderful world it might be. Fortunately, 75 ninth and tenth grade dreamers from the East Palo Alto, California – “I Have A Dream” Foundation have just that. Sister Georgiana Coonis serves as the project coordinator for the local IHAD group.

Sister Georgi grew up in the Watts area of Los Angeles and entered the Sister’s of Notre Dame in 1959. Over the years, she spent nearly fourteen years as an elementary school teacher and another fourteen years as an elementary school principal. She also worked at the University of San Diego for three years in the office of alcohol and drug education.

In the early 1990’s she decided she would like to work in Northern California and applied for the position of project coordinator at the East Palo Alto IHAD Foundation. To her surprise, she was offered the position and in 1992 came on board to work with the local team.

So how did the I Have a Dream Foundation come to be? Back in 1981, industrialist Eugene Lang was giving a talk to a sixth grade graduation ceremony at his alma mater, P.S. 121 in East Harlem New York. It was during that talk that he had a spur of the moment inspiration to help the 61 children in attendance. He told them, that if they would graduate from high school, he would pay for them to go to college. He shared with them that they must have a dream for the future, and that he would help them achieve it. Statistically, only 25% of those kids should have finished high school, and almost none of them should have gone to college. Instead, 90% did graduate from high school and 60% went on to college.

Lang created the “I Have a Dream” Foundation which has grown to over 160 projects in 63 cities serving more than 13,000 children. Each project is locally funded and locally run, and each provides a comprehensive program to disadvantaged youth from elementary school through high school, with the promise of college scholarships.

The East Palo Alto region program was started by Dave Michael, Stanford MBA ‘92. While he was a teacher at a Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong, Michael was struck by, “how many young minds are wasted throughout the world.” He remembered seeing an empowering segment on 60 Minutes featuring Mr. Lang and the inspiring “I Have a Dream” program. It was from viewing this television program that Dave vowed to establish a local program when he returned to the states.

During the fall of Michael’s first year at Stanford, he shared his idea with two classmates, Peter Dumanian, MBA ‘92, and Nick Folger, MBA ‘92. Their enthusiasm and an initial pledge from Joseph Reich, MBA ‘60, the sponsor of an IHAD program in Brooklyn, got them started. During the next year-and-a-half, a core group of 20 students refined the idea, raised money and began an intensive tutoring and enrichment program for a group of children at Flood School in nearby Menlo Park. “The Stanford MBA’s said let’s do it. In order to get the program running, they had to raise what seemed like a phenomenal amount of money,” Sister Georgi recalls. “Something like $400,000. It was a huge commitment.”

Their “I Have a Dream” program started by MBA students at Stanford Business School is the first student-initiated program in the country. “The Stanford School of Business had an affiliation with the local Flood School,” shares Sister Georgi. “They decided to adopt the third and fourth graders. There were 29 kids in each grade. We now have a total of 75 kids altogether in the program.”

“Our program is unique because we have volunteers from the business school who work with our dreamers. Each one of the dreamers has a Stanford mentor. Stanford GSB has been wonderful. The thing that is exciting for me is the realization that there are that many people that want to help other people and are willing to reach out to others. We have a support network. There’s the mentors, there’s the parents and the teachers. It is a network and the hope is that we have the nest there so if somebody falls there’s someone there to pick them up. It is so gratifying to see the people that they are becoming and knowing that I am going to be there with them until college.”

Sister Georgi proudly shares, “The dreamers are now in the ninth and tenth grades and will graduate from high school in the year 2000 and 2001. Time goes by very, very fast. It is wonderful to watch them grow as people. They are just wonderful people. Every once in a while, someone will say, you don’t have any kids? And I’d say, no, you’re it. And then I’d say, what a bother it would be to leave you and have to go to them. So I say we are all much better off this way.”

“You hear so many stories about East Palo Alto,” she tells us. “You know, kids are kids. And if they have people around them who support them and love them and take them for who they are, they’ll be OK. But, they can’t do it without the support. They just can’t. You know, they are only children.”

So what are some of the children’s dreams? “In the sixth grade they wrote down their dreams for the future. They all have dreams. And we all know that they may change too,” Sister Georgi beams. “Perpetua would like to be a police officer, Dontae an attorney, Benjamin an artist or an architect, Karely a pediatrician, Karla a doctor or lawyer, Brandon a computer graphics artists or an NBA player, Tiffany an OB nurse, Alex a doctor or a football player, Iris an archeologist, Shyvonne a lawyer, DuBrae a lawyer or a hairdresser, Rolando an architect, an engineer or a teacher, Jeremiah a gynecologist or a psychiatrist, Ashley a judge, and Sharonna a lawyer or a poet to name just a few of the children’s dreams.”

“One of the things I let the parents know was that they were not going to have to walk this journey alone and that I would be there for them and for their dreamer,” smiles Sister Georgi. “Also, the hope is, that when in fact, the dreamers become adults they will remember that they did not get through all this by themselves and they’ll be able to turn around and help out someone else.”

Indeed, what a wonderful world it would be if more children could go through life with the support from their family, teachers and friends alike that yes, today, any child has the opportunity to turn their dreams into their own reality.

Resource Information:
I Have A Dream Foundation