By
Viewed
11,700
Please choose the correct answer for each question below:
Questions: 0/118
Correct: 0
Translate:
If you look historically
at food responses,
the pantry model has been
unchanged since the [1960s].
Everywhere in places
that looked like mine,
it was inefficient,
it didn't champion quality
or the end-user experience,
and it just bothered me.
I'm Dion Dawson,
founder and Chief Dreamer
of Dion's Chicago Dream.
We’re a non-profit social enterprise
that focuses on providing access
to healthy food, consistently,
making sure that your zip code
does not determine how long you live.
We deliver a 10-pound box
of fresh fruits and vegetables
to more than 4,300 households
in the Chicagoland region per week.
It could be everything from a pineapple
to different types of apples,
citruses, Swiss chard,
spinach, pomegranates.
Since 2020, we've provided
a little over 3.5 million pounds
of fresh produce that we've purchased,
packed, and delivered.
And we've never charged
any of our recipients to date.
Our produce and our quality is top notch.
We've never taken a single piece
of donated produce.
We purchase everything.
It may cost us a little more,
but that's fine.
You don't want to dictate
what people think they deserve.
If we're thinking about people
living longer, healthier lives,
and you want to give them
the best opportunity to be healthy,
you can't do that with expiring food.
One of the things that we wanted
to do a little different
is make sure that we're talking to people.
We do a bi-weekly touchpoint
where we collect scores
in six different areas
like ease of delivery,
quality of produce, staff treatment
and even stress after delivery.
And so we can see that we're
lowering stress levels daily
by more than 80 percent.
Quite simple.
Just serving people
and delivering quality food, produce.
When this all started,
I was working overnights at Amazon.
I knew absolutely nothing.
I didn't know any statistics.
I’d never done non-profit
management or grant writing.
None of it.
That blind ignorance
will get you way further
when you just don't know
what you're up against.
On Juneteenth in 2020,
a Gen Z-er came up to me,
that I had grown up with,
and said, "Hey, what are you
doing for Juneteenth?"
And I had no idea.
You know, I tried to kind of
play along, but he said,
"No, what are you doing?"
And I just said,
"I'm going to feed 100 families."
I didn't think about it,
I don't know where it came from.
And from there it was
two GoFundMe campaigns later
and buying 800 pounds of food
and bagging chicken leg quarters
at four in the morning.
What started as someone
challenging me to do something
for the community for Juneteenth,
turned into a day and an event
that made me feel
like I had never felt before.
And wanting to chase that feeling
of not having to convince myself
that I wasn't the problem,
or not having to convince myself
that something was good,
but just feeling good.
From there, it was on.
It just lit a fire in me.
We're up to 48 employees,
about 15 vehicles.
We're opening up a 20,000-square-foot
location later this year.
We've grown in an environment
where growth has been difficult.
The average Black-led nonprofit
never makes it to a million in revenue.
We did it in 18 months.
As a company, we've never been in the red.
It’s a social enterprise non-profit
that is still a business.
Early on, it was really
about individual donors and grants.
And then over the years,
we've tried to continue to figure out
how to diversify the revenue
so that we can be sustainable.
We've never missed a payroll.
We've never lost an employee.
We've never had a volunteer.
I just think that if someone does a job,
they should get paid for it.
It's a commitment back to people.
Without a wealth-building vehicle
attached to whatever social
impact work you're doing,
then you're just perpetuating
the circumstances
that you're trying to fight.
You can still do good business
and do good by people,
and you don't have to build
like everyone else.
There were so many people early on
that tried to guide us
into taking donated food,
into using volunteer hours
and trading board seats for money.
And because of us
rebuffing a lot of those things,
here we are almost five years later,
and this work has really
not only defined a lot of people's lives,
but it's allowed me
to wake up and go to sleep
knowing and never questioning.
I have no goals.
I just believe that anything is possible.
Part of just being a dreamer
is understanding
that I decide what I focus on.
We've gotten the opportunity
to write our own story.
It's really about joy,
happiness, being OK,
knowing that you gave everything you had.
All of these are things
that are important,
and we don't champion them enough.
It's always about reminding
each other what difficult is.
A difficult day as the Chief Dreamer
of Dion's Chicago Dream
pales in comparison to the worst day
I've ever had as Dion Dawson.
You evolve, you learn.
This is the first time in my life
where I can honestly say
I've never stopped learning.
Every single day.
I learn, I apply, I try,
probably failed more in this five years
than in my first 30,
but I don't have it figured out.
I think that's the fun part.
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Related Songs