SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio community has always embraced diversity. Nothing shows that more than the annual DreamWeek summit from Jan. 13 -29. It’s the modern day expression of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.

“It’s diverse,” said Frank Trejo DreamWeek’s digital strategist. “It’s San Antonio. We’re all one people.”

It’s a new year, but the same team preparing for the 11th Annual DreamWeek.

“We spent half the year trying to get as many dynamic speakers as possible,” Shokare Nakpodia, DreamWeek’s founder, said. “We got 24 this year.”

For the last decade, Frank Trejo has been part of coordinating the San Antonio event designed to create civil and civic engagement.

“I’m really deep into community coming together,” Trejo said. “Community helping each other.”

The 2023 theme is “Identity and Representation,” which Trejo understands better than most. He immigrated from Mexico City to San Antonio when he was 6 years old.

“Immigrants, everybody has something to contribute,” Trejo said. “Everybody should be able to come together and share their own unique gift.”

DreamWeek reinforces the Alamo City’s history of diversity and inclusion. Historians said, in 1960, San Antonio became the first southern city to peacefully integrate lunch counters.

San Antonio has hosted one of the largest Dr. Martin Luther King Day marches in the nation since the '80s, which inspired Shokare Nakpodia to create DreamWeek.

“Something I hadn’t seen anywhere else, and I wondered how many people who actually couldn’t make the march would want to participate in some other fashion,” Nakpodia said.

DreamWeek has become a citywide exchange of ideas, with more than 200 events, 150 community partners participating and people in 45 countries streaming events online.

“Cultural dialogue, conversations with communities of all kinds to solve challenging issues of our society,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said.

As a Nigerian immigrant, Sho loves that DreamWeek gives a platform to diverse voices. It provides space for the community to embrace different cultures and for San Antonio to continue being a compassionate city.

“Maybe in our lifetime, DreamWeek is going to be one of the largest summits in the entire globe,” Nakpodia said.

You can head to dreamweek.org for the full list of events.