In 2020, he decided to change that. Now, the dream has grown into something bigger: he helps feed more than 5,400 households every week.
You’re kind of a number,” he told CNN. Dion Dawson knows what hunger feels like and what it means to wait in line for food. “You’re not treated as if you’re a person. And the food was mostly canned, processed or unhealthy. He is familiar with the struggle. The Englewood man started a non-profit called ‘Dion’s Chicago Dream’. The vision was simple: instead of giving people leftover or donated canned food, he buys fresh fruit and vegetables and delivers them directly to families.
He remembers the cold, the hours before the doors opened, and the sense that the people behind the table had already decided who he was.
When he came home in 2015, he was dealing with PTSD and, for a time, lived out of his car. In the summer of 2020, someone asked Dawson what he planned to do for Juneteenth, as reported by National Geographic. He said he would feed 100 families, but he had no idea how. He started a GoFundMe, raised $2,500 and fed 96 families. The boxes are packed six days a week, loaded into vans at 4 a.m. and delivered to homes or to Dream Vaults, locker-style collection points inside local stores.
That August, he officially launched Dion’s Chicago Dream as a non-profit.
“I didn’t have a favourite fruit growing up,” he told the outlet. “In 30 years, nothing had changed,” he realised. “Think along the lines of HelloFresh but free,” Dawson told the outlet.
Dawson grew up in Englewood, on Chicago’s South Side. His family was often homeless, and some days they ate only once. Food pantries kept them going, but what they handed out was mostly canned goods and processed food. Dawson later joined the Navy and served for six years. A visit to a food pantry at a local VA hospital gave him a thought he couldn’t shake. And he wanted to find a better way to feed people. Most pantries depend on donated shelf-stable food. But Dawson’s group is different. It buys produce from local farmers and a regional supplier, which allows it to control quality. A platform called Cosmic Crate tracks each step, and recipients receive text alerts about their deliveries.
