NEW YORK — Like all high school teenagers, the journey to prom starts with plenty of excitement and anticipation.
However for a group of local teens, that journey is just a little bit more special.
The group – made up of 100 teens from across the NYC metro area – are headed to the Garden of Dreams prom where youngsters facing obstacles like poverty, homelessness and illness get treated like royalty for a night of dinner and dancing at Madison Square Garden.
The young men and women from the Dreams organization as well as the Children’s Aid Society, got together weeks ago in a quest to find the perfect ensemble for the big night.
“This is a process, not just a day leading up to the prom,” Damaris Lewis, fashion model and chairwoman of the Garden of Dreams Prom told PIX11 News back in March. “These kids see a lot of each other and we really want it to be about coming together.”
From the daylong fitting to the big day on Tuesday, nerves were high but the excitement was even higher at the Affinia Hotel in Midtown where the guys get the GQ treatment and the girls channel their inner divas.
“I’ve never had more than two people work on my hair before,” a smiling Samantha Koch said as she was surrounded by her own personal glam squad. “I feel amazing.”
For 14-year-old Davanzo Joseph, who was born with a physical disability that has affected the way he walks, expectations for prom night were pretty high. “I was a kid who used to get bullied a lot of what I have,” he said. “I’m a kid who has had a lot of surgeries but I got through it and this is the reward that I get.”
Once inside, the fun continued as rapper ASAP Ferg surprised prom goers with a special performance that brought down the house, truly making it one of the most memorable nights of their lives.
the RAMOS project 
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