Dragon Kim Foundation

Dragon Fellowship Program

The purpose of the Fellowship program is to empower young leaders to become active agents for change in their communities, and to help them create and execute meaningful service projects that impact underserved populations. The Fellowship provides educational and financial access to students of all backgrounds, access that is rare for high school students. We use the term “social entrepreneurship incubator” to describe the program—social entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals or groups develop and fund solutions that directly address social, cultural or environmental issues, and have a positive impact on their community. After selecting our cohort from applications from all over the Southwest, we provide free leadership, personal and business development training and mentorship from industry leaders who help our students as they design and implement their project. The Fellowship also provides up to $5,000 in financial support for each project according to projected budgets and offers equity fund stipends to low-income students who need to work during the summer to contribute to family expenses. Finally, we host a Dragon Challenge “Shark Tank” competition at the end of the program, where top project teams may compete for additional financial support before a panel of business leaders.

Dragon Music Program

This program provides underserved children with loaned instruments and a full school year of free music lessons from professional instructors while engaging high school students to volunteer as student teachers. The personal attention from these teenage peer mentors is vital to working with young children who have limited access to musical instruction and helping foster a love for music. Housed on the campuses of the Orange County School of the Arts (Santa Ana) and the California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley (Duarte), low-income elementary school children gain exposure to music in many forms—band, string orchestra, guitar, ukulele and choir. Student teachers receive leadership training to learn how to share their love of music with young kids, and also receive mentorship from master teachers and real-life classroom management experience.