Lamar and I are at Walt Disney World in Orlando covering the Disney’s Dreamers Academy, a four day event designed to inspire teens to dream big. This is our second year attending and we always walk away so inspired by what we learn not only from the speakers, but also from the teens who are determined to achieve their dreams in spite of life’s obstacles.

The Disney’s Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and Essence Magazine is in it’s fifth year. Steve Harvey says:

“God blesses you to become a blessing. This is why we do this.”

Michelle Eubanks, President of Essence Communications Inc said: “Essence is happy to be a part of a program that you actually see lives changing.” Essence ,whose in its second year of sponsoring this event, actually makes summer internships available to a handful of dreamers.

This experience is opening up a whole world of new possibilities for the teens as some of them have never been on an airplane. Tevyn Cole, a dreamer from the 2008 class, said: “Since the dreamers academy my thinking has changed…it’s become more broad.”

Tevyn shared that while he was at the Disney Dreamers Academy he saw an exhibit on Japan and said I want to go to Japan. The next year he was an exchange student in Japan and became an English teacher in South Korea. Tevyn, who is now a junior in college, creator of his own clothing line, School Me Clothing , and has just been given a summer job at Disney says that he is now a strong believer that you can speak your dreams into existence.

Even though there have been a little more than 500 dreamers, this program has impacted tens of thousands of lives as those dreamers go back to their families and communities and share the good news that:

“If you can dream it. You can be it.”