The Salinas Valley Dream Academy is the place where you literally see your hard work pay off in just a matter of months. Ruben Pizarro, Economics and Government teacher, founded the Dream Academy in 2008 and took his first group of 33 Alisal students to experience Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration in 2009, “My government students motivated me back in 2008. We had always done marches rallies or something related to government and so we brainstormed together and said ‘Well why don’t we go to the presidential inauguration?’ and that’s kind of how it started,” said Pizarro.

Pizarro soon came back after his successful trip in hopes of expanding the club and making it accessible to everyone in the Salinas Valley, “We started noticing that we have all these students who are going on these trips and we see the potential in them and see that they’re excited of doing more and knowing more and being more and we decided, ‘Why don’t we help them along that road? Why don’t we be the people who help them become who they want to become?’” he said. With this in mind the academy soon evolved, “First, it was just traveling and then it became leadership,” Pizarro said.

Before it became an academy, students just joined like any other club; however, now that it is an academy students now have to go through an application process, “You have to apply online, we have a particular website where you apply, and then you have to be interviewed, everybody has to be interviewed. Then you go to a parent meeting and then sign contracts and be sure that this is what they want to commit themselves to,” Pizarro said. Melissa Bautista said, “I had to go into an interview and I was asked questions on how well I’m doing in school and how I heard about the program and how financially stable my family was. The process was pretty easy, I got into the academy it was well worth it.”

Although it doesn’t seem like much, the commitment goes beyond one’s signature and word; members have to participate in eighty percent of the services and their parents have to volunteer in at least three of these. The services would include events like El Dia de La Familia where members would help out with parking, help sell sodas in the Airshow, and even give out gifts to little kids during christmas. There are also Saturday meetings which the student has to attend to listen to a speaker and then do some team building activities. Alexis Madewell said, “We had the meetings on Saturday every month and they were different, like sometimes we would have guest speakers or we would talk about community service projects that we would want to do. I really liked the guest speakers that we would get because they would talk to us about their background, where they came from and how they made it big in the world.”

The activities teach the students life experiences, “We hope they gain a confidence, a boldness, that they become empowered to chase their dreams,” Pizarro said. Not only does he want the students to gain that personal confidence but he wants them to realize that there is more than just Salinas, Pizarro wants to, “create young people who feel like they have more choices in life, young people who feel like they are more prepared to get out of whatever small world they are in. If you’re a minority, recent immigrant, or your parents don’t have a formal education, or you don’t have that much money, all those things add to the kind of isolation that young people can go through; we have to prepare them to go off and be successful, away from East Salinas.”

Club members, especially the club officers who know what goes on behind the scenes, take many skills with them. Nancy Lara, vice president for the 2015 trip said, “It has taught me leadership skills and it has helped me see that everywhere you go there’s going to be obstacles and it’s going to be hard but you could still do it.”  In many cases they were under stress and they learned how to handle it. Gisselle Cortez, co-president in 2015 said, “I learned to take a step back and take a deep breath; to not overwhelm myself.” Most of the people would agree that they gained leadership and public speaking skills as well as a clear understanding on what responsibility is.

Although it appears to be solely centered around Alisal students, Pizarro claims that it also benefits the community, “Anytime you impact people you impact the community because that’s what a community is, it’s a compilation of people, and if we impact young people then we’ll have the greatest impact on the community,” he said. Members of the Dream Academy also work in community projects where they try to help out low income families in need, or just people in need. Jesus Velasquez, president of this years academy said, “We did the toy drive, we had over four hundred toys, we had so many that by the time it ended we were giving families extra toys, because we had so many we had to give them away. Another one was the food drive, and we worked multiple events. We did a barbecue and we had leftovers from the barbecue; a couple of kids from the dream academy were there and we went downtown where all the homeless people live over there in chinatown and we gave away two hundred plus plates of chicken.”

This school year, students went to Boston and New York City.  Madewell said, “We went to Boston and we went to Harvard and that was really cool, I really loved Harvard, and then we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Then we left and went to Yale, and then New York. The first night there we walked to Times Square and it was so amazing because it was like your first time there experiencing it and you see all the big billboards and all the lights and it’s just so bright and crazy. It was an amazing experience, I’m really glad I went.”

For the upcoming year the Dream Academy will, for the third time, witness history in the upcoming presidential inauguration. Analilia Robles, an Alisal student signed up to join for next year said, “I’m excited for the inauguration, about attending; I haven’t traveled in fifteen years, I’m looking forward to it.” Another student, Josue Gil, said, “I think it’s a really good program, to get to go on all the trips and do all of the community service,”  “I hope the students have a memorable experience, and see hopefully Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton elected there. If it’s Donald Trump, then we will just take tomatoes with us. It’s not like we are not going to go but we’ll go there to protest, to let the world know that we’re not okay with it. It’s going to be memorable either way,” said Pizarro.