With the help of Hope to Dream, 50 children from Brevard County took a brief trip to outer space. The children and their families were invited to spend the afternoon at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and toured a beloved spacecraft.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was the perfect venue for the Hope to Dream event, because they work every day to teach the public about endless potential and exploration. While on location, we spoke with retired astronaut Mark Lee about the importance of providing children the opportunity of a better night’s sleep.

“It is absolutely important that you’re refreshed and able to work the next day and so sleep is critical to our performance,” he said.

A Shuttle Big Enough to Chase Dreams

During their visit to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the children were taken across the park to tour Space Shuttle Atlantis. Along the way, they marveled at the sights of rockets used during the Space Race in the 20thCentury. The young children were dwarfed by the towering space crafts.

On their tour, guides explained the triumph of creating a spacecraft that could be reused, a dream that took decades to achieve. Space Shuttle Atlantis was involved in 33 missions into outer space, and was retired in 2011 to the Visitor Complex.

At the end of the tour, the children were brought back to the Rocket Garden to participate in games, crafts and face painting as they awaited the final surprise of the day. The children took part in a sharing moment where they talked about their favorite parts of the tour and what they wanted to be when they grew up. By an astounding show of hands, they want to be astronauts.

肯尼迪航天中心游客中心为孩子们和他们的家人提供了额外的入场券，让他们回到公园进行更多的地外探索。KSC访客中心的公共关系和公关经理丽贝卡·谢尔曼(Rebecca Shireman)表达了在肯尼迪航天中心举办的“梦想与希望”活动的意义。

“The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is a place where we inspire the next generation of space explorers by telling the NASA story in a fun, compelling, entertaining, and educational way,” she said. “The U.S. space program was built on hopes and dreams and hard work, so this event is important to inspire the next generation of space explorers.”

活动快结束时，孩子们惊喜地发现自己有了一张全新的床。每只玩具熊都附有阿什利家居店员工的励志信息，鼓励孩子们追求自己的梦想。

“I can be the perfect example of that. I lived in a farm community in Wisconsin. When I was in third grade is when I decided I wanted to be an astronaut,” Lee said. “So everything I did in my life was to get selected and to fly in space and so dreams drive what you’re going to do to get there.”

希望梦想是建立在这样一个理念上的:孩子们应该被赋予一个无限的未来，一个从今晚睡个好觉开始的未来。该组织捐赠了9万多张床位，希望孩子们能睡个好觉，这样他们就能去摘星星了。

“We believe that every child deserves a good night’s sleep and a place to have great dreams about the future,” said Steve King of Ashley HomeStore.

访问希望梦想网站，了解更多关于该组织的信息。想要了解他们如何改善北美儿童的生活，你可以在Instagram上发现更多鼓舞人心的故事。