As salamu alaykum dear DREAM supporter,

Thank you so much for your generous support helping us establish a successful transitional home for Muslim men in our community.

Right now, we're raising money for The DREAM Center—our new office, digital lab, pop-up space, and community courtyard.

With your support right now, we can unlock a $10K match on this special night. We just need a few more donations to get us there.

Can you donate any amount right now to help us cross this milestone?


The DREAM Center is going to be a beautiful space right in the heart of our neighborhood, inshaAllah.

We're raising money from our community (YOU!), writing grants, and getting creative to bring this project to life.

Any amount you can donate right now will be a huge help.

JazakumAllah khair! May Allah give you a good reward. May He accept all of your worship, charity, and service this month. And may He bless you and your family with the most wonderful Eid.

Salam,

The Dream of Detroit team

Dear DREAM Supporter,

As salamu alaykum! Peace be upon you.

We need your help! Project Homecoming, our first transitional home for previously incarcerated men, is up and running. Starting two years ago with your donation to our house rehab, you helped make this a reality. But as you know, this pandemic year has been a tough one.

We're looking for community support to make sure our home can operate with no stress through the end of 2022 at least.

Can you chip in a few dollars today to help?



Dawud, our House Manager, accepted Islam over 15 years ago, a little bit more than halfway through a 30-year stint in state prison. He had never led a particularly reckless life but found himself on the wrong end of a bad decision and paid for it dearly. Finding faith while incarcerated brought discipline and repentance into his life, and it sustained him until he was able to come home.

Coming home, Dawud was blessed to find work quickly and located a temporary living situation. Eventually, he'd find his way to Project Homecoming, where he became our first resident and lent a hand in completing the rehab of the transitional house and setting up the program to make sure we were meeting real needs. Today, Dawud has agreed to be our first Project Homecoming House Manager, but we need to make sure we can pay him accordingly.

"Pay the worker his wages before his sweat dries." - Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him)

Will you donate to our latest LaunchGood campaign to help Project Homecoming thrive?

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Dear Friend, As salamu alaykum! Peace be upon you.  Two years ago, through this LaunchGood campaign, you helped us kick off the rehab of our very first transitional house, Project Homecoming. Today, Project Homecoming is making waves—and we wanted to be sure you saw the news! Click here to read a great profile of DREAM, our transitional house manager Brother Dawud Clark, and our neighborhood that Crain's Detroit Business published this weekend. Can't view it on Crain's? Click here to check it out on our site. "Dawud Clark, a formerly incarcerated Detroit resident, is pictured at the work station where he crafts leather goods. Clark is house manager for a transitional home for formerly incarcerated men called Project Homecoming that is opening on Detroit's west side."   - Courtesy of Annalise Frank/Crain's Detroit Business Reply to let us know what you think of the story, and be sure to share it with your friends.  We're so proud of the efforts Dawud and his team have put into building a transitional home for formerly incarcerated brothers — and so are our neighbors. Check out the quote below.  "They've pretty much taken the block there and changed the trajectory of the block pretty substantially....They've...created some ripple effects in the neighborhood." - Debbie Fisher, executive director of Hope Village Revitalization" The work continues, and we're keeping our eyes on the prize. In the midst of a global pandemic, your support is more important than ever as we create our welcoming, beloved community.  As always, we're grateful for you. Have a blessed day!  Peace, The Dream of Detroit Team

As salamu alaykum, may the peace be upon you,

I've had the honor of serving the Detroit Muslim community for more than half of my life—first under the leadership of the late Imam Luqman Abdullah, later as the imam of Masjid al Aqabah, and as the Assistant Director at al-Ikhlas Training Academy, Detroit's only K-12 Islamic school.

These roles have given me a broad and holistic view of our community. And I can tell you from that experience that Project Homecoming, DREAM's new transitional house project, could be a gamechanger for us.

That's why, as these blessed days of Ramadan wind down, I'm writing to ask for your support.

When I was at Masjid al Haqq on Detroit's Westside, we had a strong outreach program to local Muslim inmates. And brothers knew that when they got out, they could come to the masjid for refuge—for a place to stay and to find brotherhood.

There was no judgment—our imam believed in total redemption and reconciliation. That's the spirit we can offer brothers with Project Homecoming as well. But what's more is that we can provide a path for these brothers to become forces for good in their community. 

Personally, I've seen it happen before. At Masjid al Aqabah, we operated a neighborhood patrol that, among other things, kept a sense of peace at night and secured the early morning school routes for children.

You can't tell me that these guys don't love community or that they're not going to protect people with their lives. Because they come from another reality, where that was never a problem. They've protected things that were worth less with their lives. Many times, brothers see an opportunity to serve in this way as part of their path to redemption.

A project like this is worth investing in because it can have a truly transformative effect—on individual lives and the community as a whole.

So many brothers falter as they leave the prison system and realize that Muslim communities out here don't quite function the same way they do inside. That reliance on prison culture impacts their ability to be truly free.

I believe that our job is to be organized, to systematically and compassionately integrate these brothers into our community, and to lend a hand in helping them thrive.

We appreciate you being a part of this critical work. On behalf of DREAM, thank you for your support. May the Most High accept all our good deeds this month and always.

Imam Mika'il Saadiq
DREAM Board Member

P.S. A generous supporter has stepped forward to match up to $5,000 in donations before the end of Ramadan. We're already at $2,500 raised. Will you help us raise another $2,500 in the next 48 hours?

Alhamdulillah, as of yesterday, 104 supporters had contributed $10,352 toward our goal, unlocking $4,868 in matching funds. Our local matching supporters have decided not to wait until the end of the campaign (which falls outside of Ramadan) and pulled forward $5,000 in commensurate matching funds based on our fundraising. In sha Allah, every week, based on what you contribute, the matching funds will be added!

As salamu alaykum friend,

One week into our campaign, we wanted to pause and say thank you for your support.

To date, we've raised nearly $10K and are on our way to having the funds needed to rehab our home and prepare it for use a transitional house. May Allah bless you!

We're writing today with another small request: Will you help spread the news of our campaign?

Sharing our fundraising video on Facebook can go a long way.

You can also tweet about your support of the campaign by clicking here.

And lastly, you can consider sharing this email with friends and family on your contact list.

Any extra support you can give to help boost the campaign would be very much appreciated. We'll be back in touch with another update soon, inshaAllah.

Salam,
The Dream of Detroit team