Project Report
| Apr 18, 2017
Pooja learns to invest in herself!
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Pooja is a 12 year old girl studying at Pragna Vidyanikethan School in the 6th grade. She is a part of Dream a Dream's After School Life Skills Programme using the arts. Having lost her father at a very young age, she sees her mother working day in and day out for their survival. She has two siblings, the elder one is working as an electrician while the younger one studies in the same school as her. They live in a cramped rented house in the suburbs of Bangalore.
Pooja was a regular at the Life Skills Sessions but seemed quiet and distracted. She struggled with social interactions and the facilitator many a time found her drawing by herself while other children were playing. The facilitator attempted engaging her in various activities and giving her responsibilities but Pooja was reluctant. Over a period of time Pooja felt safe around the facilitator and shared that she is affected by watching her mother toil as a housemaid, often being tired and sick. Pooja tries to support her mother by taking care of her younger brother and doing all the household chores. The facilitator realized that taking on household responsibilities and the guilt of watching her mother toil had affected Pooja and her ability to engage in learning. The facilitator heard her out with empathy and validated her predicament. He encouraged hey by saying that working and being responsible might be helping Pooja develop important Life Skills such as taking initiative, building resilience and overcoming difficulties. He encouraged her to channelize and further enhance these skills through the Life Skills sessions.
Over a period of time, Pooja realized that being disengaged was impacting her learning. Soon, one could be see Pooja participating actively, seeking support from her peers and even leading activities. This was the first step in Pooja’s journey to learn to build her self-esteem and to look at herself positively and she takes on life’s challenges.
Listening to young people with empathy, understanding their stories and struggles, validating their journeys and emotions are key aspects of Dream a Dream’s unique life skills approach that help facilitators create transformative experiences for young people. In the presence of a caring adult, young people learn to trust, share and take creative risks with attempting to break-out of their struggles just like Pooja did.
In 2016, Dream a Dream worked with 5305 young people like Pooja in our After School Life Skills Programme. Our Impact Analysis shows that 8 out of 10 young people show an improvement in Life Skills through the year; their attendance in sessions is over 88% and over 85% young people participate through the year. We have 49% girls like Pooja participating in the programme and over 202 batches delivered over 10,000 hours of Life Skills sessions through the year.
All this is possible because of committed donors like you. Thank you is all we can offer you for supporting young people like Pooja to discover their strengths and moved forward in life confidently. We have just started our new year (2017) and through our various programmes we aim to impact 60,000 new young people this year. We invite you to make a donation to Dream a Dream in this new year and continue to show your support for this critical work.
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