Unlock Smiles

Dear Co-dreamers,

We are happy to inform you that our Unlock Smiles campaign has come to a close in December 2013. Our heartfelt thank you for unlocking smiles of young people, your generous support helped us to unlock 6504 smiles by 796 people like you.

With this report I would want to share with you the story of Ashwini (name changed), from the words of our Life Skills Facilitator, Shivu followed by a few highlights of our Unlock Smiles Campaign. 

Meet Ashwini, studying in 7^th Standard, who has been part of our Dream life skills programmes since the start of this year.

The Challenge: Academically, she is an average student but highly energetic in the classroom, is a good dancer and also involves herself in sports.

During the observation, it was found that she often teases boys, and hits them as well as uses abusive words towards them. But when the life skill sessions are happening, she appears to be quiet as well as shy but her energy goes up immensely, if there is an action song or games happening during the session. However the facilitator found her arguing with her class mates and using bad words, if she was asked to do something. She feels she is right and that the rest of them are wrong. This resulted in unwanted fights in the classroom.

The Change: During the session facilitator started to give her some responsibilities. At the beginning, he asked her to do an action song of the main activity which she liked to conduct. Later she was given responsibilities like distribution of materials that helped her to have at least an eye to eye contact with everyone and she slowly started to recognize everyone. It took almost a month to see some changes in her.

The facilitator was very happy to hear feedback from her class teachers and friends that she has become very active in all class room activities, raises her hand to answer questions and takes quick responsibilities in class. She even takes care of 1-3^rd standard students in absence of teachers. She started accepting other students and thus everybody accepts her too.

Her friends said that they were scared to talk to Ashwini in the beginning and now it is different, they love her.

The Dream Power:  Facilitators play a key role within the Dream A Dream programmes. They create platforms for the young people in our programmes to face and overcome their challenges.

Major Highlights of Unlock Smiles:

• Successfully unlocked 6504 smiles as against our initial target of 8000 smiles.
• Smiles were unlocked in a variety of creative ways spread across several diverse events such as:
  • Tour De smiles - Tour de Smiles was an event organised for cycling enthusiasts to cycle for a cause on the 17th of October 2013. It attracted cyclists from across Bangalore who came to support the cause and unlock smiles. The event was organised in partnership with Decathlon who took care of the entire logistics for the event. Funds were raised through an entry of 12 smiles each. A total of 235 smiles were unlocked by 25 cyclists.
  • Trek de smiles - Owing to lack of poor marketing of the event it was not conducted as a part of the Unlock Smiles Campaign. Instead, the event was successfully run as a Volunteer Engagement Activity (Dream Funday) with 17 young people and 12 volunteers on the 7^th of December 2013.
  • Soiree de Smiles - ‘Soiree de Smiles’ was Dream A Dream’s first exclusive fundraising evening, to encourage old HNI supporters to deepen their relationship with us and for potential supporters to get to know us better by becoming Smile Champions. Funds were raised through a minimum commitment of Rs.25000 to Unlock 100 smiles as an entry to the event. The event was conducted on the 22^nd of December at Escape Hotels and Spa (Bricklane). There were a total of 9 donors who made pledges at the event. The event managed to unlock 1428 smiles.
  • Internal Employee Campaign - An internal campaign was run at Dream A Dream, to encourage employees to reach out to their personal networks and unlock smiles. 600 smiles unlocked with the support of employees from their personal networks.
  • School Fundraiser - ‘Forgo A Cracker’ was an initiative run by the Volunteer Engagement Team as a part of Unlock Smiles. It aimed at encouraging school students to campaign against the use of firecrackers (being a social and environmental hazard) and use that money to unlock smiles. This was run between 29^th October to 10^th November 2013 at NPS, Indiranagar and Oakridge International. A student from NPS Indiranagar also ran this campaign at her apartment complex, Vars Fantasy. 99 smiles were unlocked through Forgo A Cracker.
  • Campaigns at Corporates - Plan was put in place to run an ‘Unlock a Smile Day’ with 10 different companies. This involved a company dedicating one day to the campaign through e-mail blasts and encouraging their employees to unlock smiles. As a part of the Joy of Giving week, ‘First Source’ encouraged employees to donate and unlocked 761 smiles.
  • Social Media Promotions - Posts were updated on the Dream A Dream facebook page and e-mails were sent to the entire data base. 892 smiles unlocked through social media promotion.

With this campaign you have supported close to 542 young people to gain a year of life skills education. We acknowledge that this was possible because of the special people like you who have supported the dreams of these young people. Please scroll down to see a few pictures of the event. Thanks for YOUR continued support!

With Gratitude,

Dream Team