Unlock Smiles

The COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc across the world and the number of positive cases keeps increasing every day. A calamity like COVID-19 brings out the best and worst in a society. The first to get affected are the young people who come from difficult backgrounds. The fast act and response measures from the government to curb the pandemic is making life more difficult for marginalized groups.

Many of our young people’s parents are daily wage workers and many of them are dependent on daily, weekly and bi-weekly income; putting an immense amount of stress on them to buy food and other basic everyday needs. Summer is also the time that many young people use to earn money to save for further education. The battle against COVID-19 has made young people feel more vulnerable than before because they wouldn’t be able to afford school/ college fees.

At Dream a Dream, we give all the support a young person needs and more so now. We have formed a team comprising of the Leadership and the programme managers to support young people’s social, emotional and economic needs during these stressful times. We have also formed a team to stay connected and support young people and teachers in our programme. The team answers calls related to awareness and precautions related to COVID-19, give emotional/validation support, advise related to e-learning programme and provide dry ration kits to needy families.

The Global #Whatif movement

Over the last few months, Suchetha Bhat (CEO, Dream a Dream) and Vishal Talreja (Co-founder & Trustee, Dream a Dream) have tried to make sense of everything that has happened / is happening, and specifically its impact on children from marginalized communities. They wrote a series of articles (1,2,3) reflecting on the education system and the insights they were picking up from the ground.

These articles got a great response from the community and people started reaching out with questions on how they can engage and support these reflections. This led to the launch of a Global Movement called #WhatIf. You can read more about it here - https://whatif-global.com/.

The #WhatIf Movement is a community driven initiative with the intention to invite a pause, a moment, a stillness into our being before we can respond to support our children. It is an initiative to explore and discover what could be our most compassionate offer to our children during this pandemic and post when children begin to re-engage with school.

There have been some amazing partners / individuals joining the movement through writing articles, sending across endorsements, creating and sharing resources, engaging with social media and taking the #WhatIf idea to their communities. Since it’s a community driven event, different partners are engaging with it in their own way and driving the thinking.

The overall hope is that the process of reflection and taking a pause will help us change narratives around education and give us a real chance to Reimagine education in a post-COVID world.

We would like to share some of the Stories of the Young people who rose to the occasion to demonstrate high leadership quality, initiative and empathy – 

Afnan 15 years old boy from Excellent English school and part of after school programme through Creative arts .he was bold enough in academic as well as other activities. one day his elder brother saw a woman begging on the street and other said family living on the footpath after some days Afnan and his brother started group called (Youth Humanity) a year back later on young people started joining the group to serve poor people and also they donated their pocket money. So far they have helped old age homes and conducted health camp for women in the homes.

 In this pandemic situation they have fed the poor people by providing the food Pack's as well as ration kit for some families. Afnan and his brother are happy to continue and he wishes more young people to join in this beautiful journey.

Sanidevan being graduated from Sadguru Saibaba School. He has been creating awareness and supporting other Young people in his community to overcome this crisis together.

 He is coming from very poor background his family members are wage workers. 

In this pandemic situation his entire family lost their jobs and they are in the confusion state what to do further to run the family. 

Then he realizes the family situation how the family is suffering from this pandemic and how could he contribute himself for the family. Then he decides to do some sort of work and get into News Paper boy where he earns Rs.2000 every month and spends it for the family needs. 

 He understood how the people in his community are facing the same issues and Young people are attracting to bad habits.

 Then he started bringing Young people in small numbers with precautions then started football practise, so they don’t get into bad habits. Then communicating with them and with support of Dream a Dream he started distributing Ration Kits to the families in need.

Kusumanjali 14 years old girl from Blossom public school.

 In this pandemic  time. she  wanted to do something for the society at the same time she got an idea, her father had a group called CPT this group was helping by preparing food and distributing food to their locality people. So she decided to participate with CPT group to help other people. Then she started preparing food with their group  and distributed food for the people who are in need  in this difficult situation and also she was taking care of the street dogs near her house by feeding food. She was happy doing all this service for her community and she feels that taking care of community is her responsibility.

Muskan (name Changed) is studying in 9^th standard at Raza Public School in Bismillah Nagar, Bangalore. Her father is a fruit vendor and mother a home maker. Her elder sister studies in 10^th standard and a younger brother in 5^th standard in the same school. Muskan comes from a large conservative family. She was very quiet and looked very worried. At times she looked very disturbed and disinterested in life. As per Muskan, her parents and grandparents never cared for her and she felt neglected. She did all the household chores and felt that her siblings were being better-taken care of than her.

• Dream a Dream Annual Report 2016-17 (PDF)