About Dream Summer 

The Dream Summer Fellowship is an annual program of the UCLA Dream Resource Center founded in 2011. Over the past ten years, Dream Summer has provided over 1,000 fellowship opportunities to immigrant youth and allies and has partnered with over 300 social justice organizations across the country. Dream Summer: 

● Empowers immigrant youth to be the next generation of social justice leaders through leadership and professional development, movement building, and on-the-ground experience in social justice organizations. 

● Creates safe and healing spaces for immigrant youth to connect and build with one another. 

● Promotes an intersectional, cross-racial, and intergenerational approach to social justice that addresses the needs of immigrant communities. 

Participants are placed within social justice-based organizations and work closely with their host organization to incorporate and strengthen the role of immigrant issues alongside the organization’s social justice work. Over the summer, fellows engage and lead social justice efforts by aligning the call for immigrant rights issues alongside the unique challenges of queer and transgender communities, Asian and Pacific Islander communities, Black immigrant communities, the ongoing mass incarceration and criminalization of people of color, worker rights, and health care access for all. 

Dream Summer fellows receive a $7,000 fellowship award for their participation in the program, leadership and professional development training, and become part of a national alumni network of over 1,000  immigrant rights leaders. 

Who is admitted into the Dream Summer program?

Dream Summer 2025 is open to both experienced social justice leaders and those who wish to begin or strengthen their involvement in social justice. We welcome various types of leadership styles and value the diversity of roles that make social justice movements possible. If you are an organizer, artist, event planner, grant writer, graphic designer, researcher, photographer, social media guru, have strong public speaking and/or writing skills, data analysis, data entry, web developer, workshop facilitator, language interpreter/translator, or have any other skills that you would like to utilize to advance a social justice movement, this is the program for you.

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