From the founder
I believe deeply in community, real community, where people are known, not labeled, where differences don’t push us apart, but remind us of our shared humanity. Thank you for being here. Whether you’re a donor, a partner, a volunteer, or simply someone who believes the world can be gentler and more just, you’re part of this story. I’m grateful to walk it together.
With gratitude,
Diana
Build a Dream is a Us Registered 501(C)(3) Non-Profit Charity. Every donation is tax-deductible.
My Story
Hi! My name is Diana, and I believe y’all need to know what kind of room this is and how I found my way into it. I grew up in South Louisiana, running from things I didn’t have words for, literally fleeing into the marsh in my boots, with big, feral feelings and no safe place for my voice. It took me a long time to stop running wild, and even longer to sit still enough to hear myself. But when I finally let the silence catch up to me, I found something waiting there. Something fierce, ancestral, and useful. Something that wanted to be given away. That is where this work began.
Before Build a Dream, I founded Bridges for Bethlehem, a grassroots 501(c)3 organization working on the ground in Palestine. We carried insulin and chickens into remote villages. We supported orphans and widows with fresh produce and necessities. We hosted back-to-school parties with clowns and lamb meat pizza for hundreds of marginalized children. We even bought sheep. Our motto was simple: disrupting distress with beauty. We built a bead cooperative, where women crafted work from flowers, salt, and sand. They were literally making beautiful, unique jewelry from what was under their feet.
But eventually, we had to let it go. The work was good and right and full of life, but the circumstances around it tore us down. The very hands doing the serving began to need holding. In the nonprofit world, the mission is everything. Our mission was worthy, but our resources on the ground were too shallow to uphold it. With real grief, we acknowledged we couldn’t carry it forward anymore.
But you know, sometimes love doesn’t end… it redirects. And mine did, thank God—right back here to Pensacola… but not without detours.
At 62, I “walked” back into a college classroom forty-five years after I first walked in. I had been a College Senior for 40 years. I joked with all my classmates that I was a Sr. Sr. I received my first Social Security check and my Sr. school ID in the same month. Within a year, I earned my degree with a concentration in nonprofit management from LSU Online. I made an A in Statistics, which, if you know me, is a cross between hilarious and a miracle. I finally walked across the stage, last year, in a cap and gown that I am ridiculously proud of.
And all of it — the running, the mud, the work, the letting go, the returning ...it brought me here. To Build a Dream. To this room, degree in hand, to you.
Build a Dream's motto is, "When women rise, the world thrives." We are not just proclaiming that. We are enfleshing it. Build a Dream is about what happens when a community looks at someone and says, "We see you… And we’re here." Come on in!
Diana