Welcome to the DREAM.
Protect and Empower one street at a time.
Dream Streets is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our mission is to protect and empower individuals living in distress.
We provide supplemental groceries and family-strengthening tools. In addition, we foster positive community relations at our physical locations, mobile ministry sites, and the streets we serve in West and North Nashville.
When we began our mission in 2013, generational poverty and oppression long plagued neighborhoods in the 40th Avenue Clifton corridor of West Nashville. We asked our neighbors, “What do you need?”. We listened with compassion and took action together. We found that genuine relationship, not just another program, transforms people’s lives and communities.
We’ve planted roots on forgotten streets in West Nashville for almost ten years, forming a family of dreamers– volunteers, donors, and community members who choose hope over hopelessness.
WE INVITE YOU TO BE PART OF THE DREAM.
Dream Streets Executive Director, TJ Fletcher, used this illustration in 2020. These images became an integral visual when explaining our mission and what makes us unique.
We now call them TJ’s circles.
The first picture is the ideal support system.
Your core contains those closest to you. Next is a network that you have set up around you: things you have chosen to be a part of maintaining health and wholeness. The outer circle is the scenario you were born into. Unfortunately, you can do very little to decide how this circle affects you. For most of us, we interact very little with the 3rd circle.
The second picture depicts when a crisis rocks your support system. Crises can be anything, and it has no favorites. But the support system doesn’t look the same for everyone. When your circle is unstable from trauma, generational poverty, racism, prejudice, lack of education, or broken systems, crises start to seep through every area of life, no matter what circle they originated from.
The circles break.
The next picture is where Dream Streets steps in. First, where there is a crack, we fill it. Then, we help piece it together with each individual. For example:
-A single mom with no one in the inner circle she trusts. We invite her to join the mom's group to build community with women who face the same struggles she does.
-An elementary student whose mother died. We teach him social-emotional regulation and give him a journal to process his feelings and thoughts. Not long after, he asks for a new one because he filled the first one up.
-A grandma we met at a mobile foot site caring for her grandkids. She shares that her rent has increased, so we help her locate stable, affordable housing and welcome her grandkids to programs we offer for children.
The final picture is empowerment. By repairing the cracks, the individuals build their circles back up: strong and proud. We glue the broken pieces back together until it’s whole and healthy allowing individuals to become the glue for someone else in crisis.
This is the Dream Streets family.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TEAM BEHIND THE DREAM
FAITH STATEMENT
The mission of the Corporation is to protect and empower our neighbors living in distress. We believe that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are mandated to care for individuals living in crisis. We follow the words and teachings of Jesus. The love of Christ is reflected in all that we do and to everyone we meet. Every person, regardless of faith, race, sexual identity, national origin, disability or age is welcome to attend and serve at our programs.
