Dreaming of a New Reality.

• Author: Rhode, Tim
• Position: LIFE IN AMERICA - 'Dare2Dream' program for the youth by the nonprofit organizations 1Life Fully Lived and Little Nonprofit That Could

IS IT STILL POSSIBLE for someone to create their "American Dream" today? Yes, and with the help of some friends, we are showing how it is done. Our "Little Nonprofit That Could," 1 Life Fully Lived, and rockstar community leaders--like Philadelphia's ex-con turned motivational speaker, street poet, author, entrepreneur, and activist Will Little--are out to change our culture for the good. The world needs a Little 1Lifin' right now.

Little has teamed up with us to create a program called Dare2Dream, an initiative that is receiving positive reviews from schools and organizations, as well as the youth ages 12 to 21 who attend. The secret sauce is using relatable, successful mentors like Little to teach young people how to "work it" with their lives, how to become aware, alive, and purposefully moving towards their best path or track to their most fulfilling life possible. 1Life Dare2Dream creates a day of discovery of dreaming, planning, and leaving the event with a compelling vision--or at least a start towards what it can be.

At the ILife Dare2Dream days, Little gets young people to go inside, dig deep, and think about their actions, like he did when he retraced his steps and found the mistakes that led to his 10-year incarceration. Today, 20 years later, Little can take a room of doubting teens and, in 15 minutes, they all are putty in his hands, listening intently as he mesmerizes them with his cold hard truth of the streets. How does Little bring street cred to the event? Here is his story:

"I was born in North Carolina. My mother moved me and my three older sisters to Philadelphia to escape my abusive father when I was six months old. As I grew, I didn't know much about my father. I was a quiet kid, kept to myself a lot, and played with my older sisters.

"My mother had another daughter when I was three years old, so now it was four sisters and me in the same house. My mother struggled financially to take care of five children in the big city, so we didn't have much sometimes. All we had to eat was grilled cheese sandwiches, cereal, or hot dogs for dinner. There were times when we didn't have heat and hot water so we had to buy an electric stove and boil water for our baths and cook on it. We had a rough childhood growing up poor and not having the basic necessities in life in order to just make it day to day.

"As I grew older, I started getting exposed to the criminal world, seeing the hustlers in the streets: the number writers, drug...