Give Children Wings to their Dreams

Dream a Dream is a registered, charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21^st century using a creative life skills approach. Currently, we work with 10,000 young people a year through our two innovation labs – After School Life Skills Programme and Career Connect Programme; have trained over 5500 teachers/educators from 157 partners impacting over 137,500 children and young people and sensitize over 2500 volunteers through our unique Life Skills Development model. We work on a strong collaborative approach with local charities, corporates, volunteers, governments, expert consultants and a host of national and international strategic partners.

In our After School Life Skills Programme, we use creative arts and football as mediums to engage and develop critical life skills among young people between the ages of 8 to 15 years. This programme is an innovation lab where new approaches to life skills development are introduced, demonstrated, documented, evaluated, and fed back into a larger framework for re-imagining learning for young people in the country. To measure the improvements in life skills amongst the young people, we use the Dream Life Skills Assessment Scale (DLSAS*).

* The Dream Life Skills Assessment Scale (DLSAS) developed in-house is a first of its kind, published and standardized scale that is being used by NGOs/Schools to assess improvement in life skills - http://globaled.gse.harvard.edu/files/geii/files/dream_life_skills_assessment_scale_final_2.pdf

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"My dream is to play for the Indian football team. I am working very hard to achieve my goal. Dream a Dream Football sessions have helped me a lot as I have learnt important life skills such as managing conflicts, collaboration and leadership skills. All of these are crucial skills required for team sports like football. I will use them in my life and to realise my dream of playing for India when I grow up." Purushotham shares with a confident smile.

Purushotham is a 15 year old boy studying in 9th standard in Annaswamy school. His father works as a building contractor and his mother is fruit vendor and his brother studies in the same school. He enrolled in the After School Life Skills Sports programme in 4th grade, when he realized his passion for football while participating in life skills sessions.

He was the most active kid when it came to football. He interacted and had healthy relationships with all his peers during sessions. He listened carefully to the facilitator always and would be the first to raise his hand in the reflection circle and share his learning and areas of improvement for the next session. Being a part of the group for 5 years, he was very confident to initiate any activity in front of the larger group.

However, during an activity named “Listen and not to listen” the facilitator was surprised when Purushotham started acting strange. In the activity, each student was paired up with a person from the peer group. Purushotham was paired up with Karthik. Both of the participants never talked amongst themselves, sitting throughout the session facing opposite directions. Purushotham didn’t pay attention to the session and even during the reflection session, he was sitting in a corner quietly while others shared their experience with enthusiasm. Upon enquiring about this behavior, he said that he will never pair up with Karthik again. When asked for a reason, he shared that a few months ago, there was some misunderstanding between them and Karthik had beaten him up in front of others. This was a humiliating incident and he decided to ignore Karthik thereafter. This was a challenging situation but the facilitator realized the gravity of the situation and the need to channelize Purushotham’s anger in a constructive way.

The facilitator gave 2 options to Purushotham. The first option was a simple one – to stop coming to the sessions and the second one - a rather difficult one at that time – to work towards building a healthy relationship with Karthik, which would otherwise negatively affect a team game such as football. This was done on purpose as the facilitator wanted to understand his ability to manage conflicts at a comparatively smaller level. Purushotham however made the right choice, given his passion for football and agreed to play and talk with Karthik on field.

The facilitator then announced a football tournament the next day. When the students were asked about their playing and position preferences, Purushotham volunteered to organize the complete tournament. He made 2 teams for the tournament and made Karthik the referee. This action demonstrated a positive behavioral change on Purushotham’s part, his leadership abilities and how he prevailed over his conflicts and could work towards the realization of a larger goal putting his differences behind him. He is working hard to achieve his dream and he thanks Dream a Dream sessions which helped him with required skills for the same.

Teacher’s quotes: -

His teacher recalls, "Purushotham never seemed to be interested and would never listen in the class. However, he has changed a lot since joining the Football life skills session. Not only has he developed leadership abilities which are evident when he manages his team, he has also started helping his classmates with school work and other responsibilities, something we had never imagined would happen."

Facilitator feedback: -

“Purshottam used to lose his temper easily and get angry with anyone for no particular reason. It used to become difficult to interact with him or control his anger during this time. However, post the programme, his patience levels have improved a lot. Also, he respects everyone alike."

We take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support and contribution towards Dream a Dream's vision. Our work would not have been possible without you. The last year was made remarkable through your generous support and played a vital role in our pursuit to ensure young people from vulnerable backgrounds thrive in the 21st century

We are proud to share our Donor Report for the year 2017-18 with you. Our reports will give you in-depth insights into the impact of our work in the last year along with significant events and stories of change. Donor Report 2017-18 http://dreamadream.org/reports/DonorReport17-18.pdf

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Your support so far has helped us empower young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and thrive in the 21st century. We look forward to your continued support as we seek to sustain and scale our programme.

• General Donor Report 2017-18 (PDF)