The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

By Irv Katz, President and CEO, National Human Services Assembly

What are the odds that two National Assembly member organizations, both of which are about helping young people realize their dreams, would have big celebrations one night after the other in the heart of New York?  That happened this week as “I Have A Dream” Foundation celebrated its 25th anniversary at Rockefeller Plaza’s Rainbow Room and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship presented, “Dare to Dream,”   its thirteenth annual Salute to the Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards at the Marriott Marquis.

“I Have a Dream” Foundation celebrated the “dreamers,” the young people who it helped attain a college degree, and the dream-makers: its founder and donors whose initiative and generosity made it possible.   NFTE recognized entrepreneurship teachers, youth that have started their own successful businesses, and, like IHAD, its founder (our colleague, Steve Mariotti) and donors.  Yet, the “rock stars” both nights were the youth. 

As I basked in the joy of the two events, I wished that everyone in our community of agencies and leaders—the members of the National Assembly—could have been there.  I think that every time I attend an agency event, wishing that we each could see first hand the incredible contributions our colleague organization make. 

It also struck me that dreams is what this work is all about---helping people find and realize their dreams.  “Human services” is such an inadequate term for our collective work.  It’s not about the services, is it?  It’s about helping people through adversity to be sure; but it is mostly helping them to, well, to use a well-worn phrase, “be all that they can be.”  They can be a cancer survivor rather than a cancer victim or a college-bound entrepreneur rather than a youth at risk.

The commodity in which we trade is hope.  As giving to human services stagnates and public funding for domestic needs declines, maybe we should remind ourselves and others that we provide people with hope to become the sum of their assets and potential not their sum of their challenges.  And we (and I humbly include myself and the Assembly in the work that our members do) provide people with pathways—realistic, achievable pathways—to realize their dreams.

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