Dream a Dream is a registered, charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21st 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 7,700 teachers/educators from 206 partners impacting over 1,92,500 children and have impacted over 1 million children through strategic partnerships with state governments in Delhi and Jharkhand. We work on a strong collaborative approach with local charities, corporates, volunteers, governments, expert consultants and a host of national and international strategic partners.
Dream a Dream has been recognized and awarded for innovation, transparency and accountability over the years by Ashoka, Global Development Network, Harvard, Rockefeller Foundation, Resource Alliance and others.
Three years ago, we unveiled our five-year strategic plan, which outlined our vision for 2016-21. Since 2016, we have continually invested in research & advocacy to build momentum around our vision of equipping young people from vulnerable backgrounds with life skills. The journey so far has been very exciting, and we believe we are on the right path. With this report we would like to share some key highlights from FY 2018-19 as we move closer to our 2021 vision.
Our strategic intent is to build a supportive community (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEgEkO8VxKM) that equips millions of young people from vulnerable backgrounds with life skills to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21st century. By 2021, we aim to scale the impact of our work to over 500,000 young people in India.
We are pleased to share with you some of our global achievements and recognitions:
2854 innovations in education were recently identified by the Brookings Report - ‘How Playful Learning Can Help Leapfrog Progress in Education’. Of these, more than two thirds were identified as playful learning innovations. Dream a Dream is one of the innovators featured in the report You can read the full report by The Brookings Institution on how play can help leapfrog learning. Read more here - https://hundred.org/en/articles/did-you-know-that-two-hundred-innovators-were-featured-in-the-brookings-report
Each year, Dream a Dream hosts Change The Script: a two-day gathering aimed at re-imagining the future of education. It is an invite-only event that brings together policy-makers, non-profit leaders, researchers, academicians, ecosystem builders and young people to reimagine the future. A future that empowers young people to overcome adversity and prepares them for the fast pace of change in the world. Our purpose, as defined by our collaborators over the years: For every child a thriving life. Here are the highlights of CTS 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RnidJdt_Q3o
An article summarising the recently released book by Harvard, ‘Preparing Teachers to Educate Whole Students - An International Comparative Study.’ It’s a book that features Dream a Dream as an Innovation from India. You can read about it here - https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ uk/19/01/global-approach-teacher-development
Dream a Dream’s Life Skills Assessment Scale was selected as one among hundred inspiring innovations that are changing the face of education across the world at the HundrED Education Summit in Finland. This is a recognition of over 8 years of research that we put into establishing a first of its kind, standardised, validated and published scale to measure the impact of Life Skills on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The published paper has been downloaded over 4500 times and is being used across the world. For more information visit https://hundred. org/en/innovations/dream-life-skills-assessment-scale-dream-a-dream. You can read about the scale here - http://dreamadream.org/the-urgency/item/362-dlsas
Suchetha Bhat, CEO at Dream a Dream gave a keynote address at the Partners for Youth Empowerment’s Global Gathering hosting over 90 participants from over 40 countries. She shared the partnership journey between both the organisations and how adopting the Creative Empowerment Model from PYE has helped Dream a Dream scale its impact to over One Million children in India today. Her keynote was welcomed with a standing ovation on the power of partnerships based on trust, deep commitment and love.
