D.R.E.A.M.S. is a federally funded teen pregnancy prevention program focusing on abstinence and abstinence plus ( a sex education policy based on a combination of “risk avoidance” and harm reduction), HIV/STI prevention, positive youth development, financial literacy and career development. The curriculum is supplemented by a custom mobile app that provides learning opportunities beyond the classroom.

What happens to a dream deferred? Playwright Lorraine Hansberry said it best when she penned the play, “A Raisin In The Sun.” Youth and young adults begin their lives with ambition and dreams, only to find adversity and peer pressures that create barriers to their goals, which sometimes leads to dreams that dry up and fester like a raisin in the sun. Ask any third grader what he or she wants to be when they grow up and the responses will be everything from an airline pilot, astronaut, doctor, or surgeon to the president of the United States. Then ask that same individual when they are a senior in high school and you may be surprised that only a small percentage still remember their dreams, let alone are on the path of achieving them.