Frederick Newell wanted out.
The environment in his slice of the neighborhood in Chicago was great. The overall city, he said, was not.
Newell felt “entrenched.” It was a place “where you don’t really see yourself leaving,” he said. Many of those he grew up with are still there today. His best friend is dead. His brother is in prison.
Newell also knew he needed a change of scenery because he would soon be a father and he wanted a better life for his son.
“College was my way out,” he said.
When he arrived on the University of Iowa campus in the fall of 2006, the 18 year old had a six-month-old son, his faith, and loads of aspirations. He brought his son to class with him, striking a balance between school and being the best father he could.
“A lot of what I am is because of my child that I had when I was 17,” Newell said.
Newell remembers his brother falling ill during his sophomore year. He was on the verge of dropping out and going back to his old neighborhood until one of his professors, now the dean of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Sara Sanders, refused to sign his drop slip.
She told him she noticed how Newell was bringing his son to class with him. She said she admired him for that and told Newell she believed in him.
He decided to stay in Iowa City.
In the nearly two decades since, Newell has fathered eight children and is husband to a “caring and endlessly supportive” wife. He has also become a driving force, a motivator, and an inspiration to hundreds of young people as the leader of Dream City, an organization that offers programs in youth leadership, community development, and wellness.
Dream City Executive Director Frederick Newell speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for Dream City’s entreprenurial hub Friday, Aug. 2, 2024 in Iowa City, Iowa.
Finding a home
Newell has long been driven by faith, something he inherited from his mother. He is a pastor at a local church.
He says his faith in God allows him to pursue his daily work for more than a decade.
“This work is tiresome. This work is hard,” Newell said. “There’s long nights, there’s long days. This work brings trauma into my life, as well as those who do the work with me, but oftentimes it is my faith that drives me, knowing that things can be better and things will be better.”
Newell has been a part of Dream City since the beginning, returning from a Civil Rights Tour with an overwhelming desire to help black and brown students in Iowa City. He also strives to connect fathers with resources that help them succeed.
In 2012, Kenya Badgett donated her home near Grant Wood Elementary School to a new community group.
Newell, then 24, graduated with a degree from the UI School of Social Work and was leading the Dream City organization as they piloted work with Black and Latino youth out of Badgett’s home. She’d paid for a year of rent, gas and electricity when she moved out and headed south.
There, the beginnings of a now 12-year-old organization took place.
“I wanted to be in a space with young people to tell them that they’re not invisible, that they have value, and that together, we can make this city a place that’s thriving for people of color,” Newell said.
Newell and his colleagues offered something they felt the community lacked in Dream City − support for kids who live in single-family homes, especially those without fathers in their lives.
“We wanted to impact and deal with some of the trauma that many of our boys were facing due to their fathers not being at the table with them,” Newell said.
Dream City also wanted to support fathers, helping them become better versions of themselves.
The group quickly outgrew Badgett’s home and found a new, bigger spot at the Kingdom Center Church Building on the south side of town. That space represented growth — and showcased the broader reach that Dream City had begun to have.
In late 2023, Iowa City awarded Dream City $3 million that helped the organization purchase the building and turn it into what Newell calls a “forever home.”
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Frederick Newell poses for a portrait Monday, Nov. 25, 2024 at Dream City in Iowa City, Iowa.
‘Larger than life’
Davonte Foster first met Newell when he was 10 years old. They each grew up in the same area of Chicago and connected over a similar shared past in a far different environment − Iowa City. That connection has never thinned.
Like Newell, Foster described his move east as a “culture shift.” But Dream City provided Foster and “many of his friends” with a place — and a person — radiating with “authenticity.”
“When you meet someone like Fred, who’s also from Chicago and who experienced the same things as you growing up and they can actually relate to you on a different type of level, when you get in a space where you’re around him, it just allowed us to be ourselves,” Foster said. “A lot of us spent more time with Fred than we spent at home.”
Foster described Newell as “a mentor, a big brother (and) a father figure” numerous times. He came to Iowa with his mother and two sisters in 2009, returned to Chicago a few years later and bounced back to Iowa City in 2015.
“I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for (Fred),” Foster said. “I don’t know how me moving to Iowa would have affected me if it wasn’t for him being here and me having (Newell) as a resource for the past 14 years.”
Foster notes how Newell is “larger than life” and “powerful” to be around, attributing that to the power that Newell has and his obvious impact on the community.
When Foster found out he was going to be a father, he dropped everything, leaving an athletic scholarship at an Iowa college to focus on being a parent. Newell taught him he needed to be a “24/7 father,” no matter what. Foster, now 24, carries that mindset every day.
“Superheroes aren’t real,” Foster said. “But he’s probably the closest thing to it, honestly.”
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Youth representing the Dream Center of Iowa City’s Performance Arts Academy perform during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bell Ringing and Candle Lighting Award Ceremony at Grant Wood Elementary Monday, Jan. 19, 2015.
‘A regional hub’
Dream City is set to complete renovations on their “forever home” in the spring of 2025.
The facility will include space to support a black and brown entrepreneur, an auditorium for live music and theatre performances, two industrial kitchens, a handful of classrooms and much, much more.
Many who come to Dream City are Iowa City kids who are “surviving,” Newell said. He has a different vision for their future — and a different scope.
“We really want to become a regional hub that allows people to go from surviving to thriving,” Newell said. “We almost need to coin that, because lots of times, folks that come in our doors feel like they are barely surviving, and people stay within that mentality.”
Over the past 12 years, Dream City has tried to reverse the “surviving” mindset through its programming. They’ve connected young people with organizations that interest them, entities the kids don’t usually have the opportunity to interact with.
They’ve participated in workshops as part of Dream City’s Performing Arts Academy. They engaged with programming from the University of Iowa’s nursing program. Instructors from the Iowa City Community School District swung by to host a range of workshops. It’s all about providing kids with the opportunity to dream big.
Shveonna Norris, 24, first got involved with Dream City as a teenager. She loved connecting with friends and staff and later became an administrator herself.
Norris, who now works as a student and family advocate in the Iowa City Community School District, coordinated programming for Dream City as the organization and the community rallied from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It started with five kids and quickly ballooned to 40 in a matter of months.
Dream City staff like Norris have continued to show young people in the community that their dreams can become reality.
Foster sees the momentum rising.
“With the push that Fred is getting, with the funding that he’s finally getting, with the new facility, I think in the next five years, Dream City will be almost larger than life,” Foster said. “I don’t think you can put a cap on it, because, I mean, there are so many kids out in this world to reach.”
Fred Newell, Director of Dream City, walks through a meeting room, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, at 611 Southgate Avenue in Iowa City, Iowa.
‘So much potential’
Foster said that the work of Dream City can — and already has — become self-sustaining. Newell’s oldest son, now 17, is helping to run Brothers Achieving Manhood (BAM), an arm of Dream City that Foster himself was in at its inception and subsequently ran as a teenager.
The program provides a range of opportunities for students from sixth to 11th grade to connect with other successful Black men in the community, earn job opportunities and excel as students.
Through BAM and many other programs, Newell instilled a simple message in those he mentored: “We’re able to give to the generations below us.”
Norris embodies that message by connecting with Newell and Dream City. She went off to college and when she returned, helped coordinate programming for Dream City. Now, as a student-family coordinator at Iowa City High, Norris is helping to connect and relate with young Black girls and help them avoid suspension or being sent to alternative schools.
“I believe that this is only the start of something great, and that will continue to grow and continue to be a great pillar of our community here in Iowa City,” Norris said.
Building toward the future
Newell hopes that in five years, Dream City is so successful that it will outgrow its soon-to-be-opened space. He wants to continue to foster a community where people feel they have what they need to succeed. He wants to continue to help dreams come alive. Through Dream City’s renovated forever home, he hopes that can continue to be a reality.
Importantly, many of the same community-building spaces will remain intact and open to the people who need them most. Despite the organization’s growth, Newell wants their southside home to remain a space where children can connect with people who look like, feel like and understand who they are.
The space will also be equipped with room for an entrepreneur of color to open and run their own business, classrooms to allow for specific entrepreneurial presentations or personal development courses and an auditorium for performances and conferences.
Dream City thrives because of Newell, though he’s often motivated by those who make the organization what it is. They’ve created a perfect marriage, boosting Iowa City’s next generation.
“Oftentimes, I’ve learned just from working with young people in general, it’s not that they can’t do things,” Newell said. “They’ve just never been exposed to what they can do.”
Ryan Hansen covers local government and crime for the Press-Citizen. He can be reached at rhansen@press-citizen.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ryanhansen01.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How Fred Newell and Dream City are helping youth in Iowa City