Dreamcatcher’s Community Youth Institute for Regeneration and Revival
Location
The Institute creates community based learning spaces led by community members and workers that promote sustainable well-being and the unfolding of human potential for young people in vulnerable communities. The institute is based on the Wave of Life project in Tamil Nadu after the Tsunami of December 2004.
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Dreamcatchers Foundation
Organization Website
Organization Phone
91-9892612646
Organization Address
Fern Mansion, 1st floor, 29th Church Avenue, Near Khar Subway, Santa Cruz (W), Mumbai, 400054
Organization Country
India
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name Your Project
Dreamcatcher’s Community Youth Institute for Regeneration and Revival
Country your work focuses on
India
Describe Your Idea
The Institute creates community based learning spaces led by community members and workers that promote sustainable well-being and the unfolding of human potential for young people in vulnerable communities. The institute is based on the Wave of Life project in Tamil Nadu after the Tsunami of December 2004.
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
The Dreamcatchers Community Youth Institute advocates for psychosocial response to be at the heart of any community renewal process. It places the agency of this rebalancing of effort in the hands of grassroots community workers and members. It further acknowledges that any rupture in the storyline of a community requires generations to come forward and build the bridge for the young in order for continuity in the storyline to carry on.
The institute will create Community Wisdom Circles, in which youth and intergenerational community members will look within themselves and see their own inherent potential. These life-affirming conversations are led by women from the community aided through a range of creative self-reflective tools. Often times, the women could be individuals who have faced loss and tragedy themselves; and who thus go through a profound healing process themselves.
This nature of psycho-social response emphasizes that:
• The young person is placed within the context of his or her larger community or environment.
• Young people lead interactions with community members to create the emergence of a different kind of social leadership.
• Integration of intergenerational frameworks along with personal healing and transformation processes enables these communities to move to a new ground.
Through the Institute, Dreamcatchers is working to build a new field and art form in the work with young people focusing on self and community renewal practices as a starting point to social transformation. Its vision is to seed and flourish a new generation of programs that provide young people with a transformative experience and to help emerge a community of grassroots practitioners. Integrating personal healing, leadership for change, a systems view and inclusiveness, the Institute’s programs create generative engagements that unleash a momentum for the emergence oof a new point of creative action in the community.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Our current impact is derived from the successes of the Wave of Life. The Dreamcatchers Community Youth Institute uses the principles of success from the project to move a larger outreach environment. Through the project we have been able to:
1. Develop individuals embodying generative practises so that they may create regenerative spaces in the community such as the 'Community Wisdom Circle'.
2. Build 'Community Exchanges' where the community members who led our program developed modules and trained staff of other NGO's in Tamil Nadu. This form of interaction will be deepened through the Community Youth Institute.
Envisioned Impact of the Community Youth Institute:
The children experience self-affirmation, discover their own voice and truth, experience respect and inclusion and cultivate creativity. This will offer them skills to cope with life as a continous journey of change, meet the emerging future as opportunity, cultivate, anchor and strengthen bonds.
The Community Practitioner will be able to discover the seed of opportunity that lies behind the experience of any vulnerablity and celebrate the child. They will affirm self and experience renewal. Skills like reflective action, emerging and sensing new opportunities will be demonstrated.
The Field of Transformative Practice: Dreamcatchers will distill principles and best practices towards nurturing innovation in the work with young people in vulnerable communities, embed transformative practices in individuals and organizations, make connections between diverse fields and create a new generation of practitioners.
Problem
In communities experiencing the breakdown of traditional structures and relationships, going through sudden change due to calamities or relocation, entirely new landscapes emerge. The young experience increasing vulnerability as they struggle to find new ground without the guidance of elders who are coping with the change themselves. This widens the gap; endangering the web of social relationships and the essence of the community itself. The danger of losing all that has sustained the community intensifies. The young experience themselves as powerless and caught in a seemingly unending cycle of reaction and despair.
Self-discovery and renewal based practices are a key to meeting the immediate needs and creating the ground for a new balance to emerge. They have not yet been adopted as an integral part of social change practice. The Dreamcatchers Community Youth Institute has been created to be the beacon to this new art form and the multiplier of programs and practitioners.
Actions
Dreamcatchers has initiated a start up grant towards establishing the Community Youth Institute over a period of a year. The grant will enable seeding the core new initiatives in different spaces. Geographically it focuses on expanding work in Tamil Nadu and also beginning work in Maharashtra, India. Dreamcatchers has begun working towards defining global outreach strategies to launch the Institute.
The Strategic Directions
1. Direct Work: with highly vulnerable groups and children by Dreamcatchers Staff
2. Tools & Techniques: Workshops to train grassroots practitioners on methodologies and perspectives.
3. Fellowship: Training community members and young people in transformative practices within communities.
4. Mentoring: organizations to learn principles, co-create new methodologies and envision new programs
5. Building Demonstrable Models: creating new approaches to meet vulnerability needs of focused populations
6. Emerging Leaders: mentoring and enabling individuals who are trying to build programs embodying transformative practices
Results
The Short Term Outcome:
• The one year start up grant will generate a series of learning spaces in different community based contexts and places in India. This will create a dynamic network of individuals and organizations committed to the creation of youth led programs for community revival and regeneration.
The Medium Term Outcome:
• Will focus on expanding the network globally
• Building demonstratable models in the field
• Mentoring individuals and organizations to create their own frameworks and programs.
The Longer Term Outcome:
• A new generation of community based transformational programs for young people that offer young people a sense of place, purpose and continuity.
• A skilled cadre of grass roots practitioners like community organizers, teachers, community members who can initiate and support them.
• An interactive Knowledge Network where practitioners can share their innovations and learn from and build on the experiences of each other
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Year One:
A well designed outreach program at the onset to build the larger network of individuals and organizations will serve as a foundation stone. Clarity on partnership strategy is also important to be able to sustain relationships over the long term. This phase would be the beginning of developing the network of connections and introducing the work to a wide spectrum of people through a series of dialogues, workshops and training programs.
Year Two:
Developing a Knowledge Network as a generative learning space to connect individuals and innovations would a key focus. This will be constructed as the longer term container for incubation and innovation to dynamically build the field of practice. It will generate new knowledge, refine existing methodologies and develop its own range of literature. It will give practitioners the opportunity to evolve professionally and find a space for personal regeneration.
Expansion of the core team of Dreamcatchers to meet expanded outreach, program management and knowledge management needs to enable the expansion will be crucial.
Year Three:
Establishing the Mentorship program for a cohort of individuals and organizations that are willing and ready to emerge their own frameworks for transformative programs with young people in vulnerable communities. This will allow further evolution of the field and the constant birthing of new programs.
Continued expansion of the Dreamcatchers team to meet expanded scope and emerging needs.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Dreamcatchers greatest challenges to success lie in the realm of technology since it is the new component in our work that we will integrate. It will require a steep learning more specifically with regard to the following:
• Technology provides dynamism in maintaining and sustaining knowledge networks. Traditionally grassroots practitioners in small CBOs do not have access to technology. Providing access to community members in rural areas is challenging and would require seeding access spaces in the communities to serve needs beyond the Institute’s knowledge creation needs.
• The knowledge network needs to be a multi-lingual portal; offering access to community workers and members the opportunity to write in their language of choice.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$50 - 100
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
In what country?
India
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Dreamcatchers Foundation
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Working in Partnership with CBOs has been a hallmark of the Dreamcatchers outreach strategy.
Currently, the outreach to launch the Community Youth Institute is being implemented and we are in the process of developing partnerships with a wide range of organizations.
Partnerships with CBOs are crucial for they offer access grassroots workers and opportunities to embed transformative practices into their traditional work.
In the global context, associations with larger funding organizations are important to embed the principles of this vision.
Growing and dynamic networks of partners are also central to creating generative learning spaces where individual and collective evolution is based on meaningful exchanges and continuous learning.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
• Building a wide network of committed individuals and organizations.
• Finding a group of people who can design the systems and implement the Knowledge Creation Network
• Expanding the Dreamcatchers team to meet the emerging needs as this idea expands in its scope
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
When we visited the villages affected by the Tsunami; we met the elderly of the village huddled in tents that had been constructed for children to take refuge in and spend time in a diverse range of recreational activities. It was clear that in the altered landscape; this was the singular place of rest that they could still count on. The glazed eyes of the children mirrored the eyes of the elderly. We knew at that moment that there was something there that we would have to respond to; but had no clue about what that could be.
Many months later; we started to see a chasm emerge between the children and the adults. Children were happier adapting to the new world and values that had reached their doorstep. The elders were highly agitated and disappointed in them. Tempers flared; accounts of children having fights at home became more common. We realized that it was time to bring the two groups together. The children clearly needed reasons to carry on that which the elders said was being lost. Listening to each other seemed to be a natural starting point. Thus we stepped unknowingly into the discovery of the power of an intergenerational healing space. Reinstating the child back into the web of relationships in the community must lie at the core of any psycho-social program for the young. The Dreamcatchers Community Youth Institute birth honors this awakened awareness that lies at the heart of community wisdom.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Sonali Ojha is the Founder and visionary behind Dreamcatchers Foundation. Over the last 15 years she has been working with young people focusing on understanding how they perceive their world, their choices, and how they give meaning to their experience and make sense of their inner life. Her work uses what she learns from the children and builds tools to offer these to a larger audience. At the heart of her practice is the realization that every moment of breakdown, risk or change comes with the seed of opportunity. The walk with young people is to help them become sensory beings who can locate and germinate this latent seed.
Having a background in Economics and Development Policy; Sonali uses tools from her world to create work for young people. Dreamcatchers is therefore a meeting point of leadership and change management practices, social change tools and the world of creative exploration. Over the years, Sonali was introduced to the world of meditations, silence and the placing of intention out into the world by children and thus these elements form the foundations of the Dreamcatchers practice.
Crucial to Sonali is also the effort to build an organization that is authentic in its pursuit, reflective and embodying of the trust and compassion that it arouses within young people visible within its own ranks. To meet this, Sonali has adopted a leadership style that could best be characterized as Mentoring. Dreamcatchers is thus run with an ethos of shared leadership, offering each staff member stake holding in its decisions and directions.
Sonali is an Ashoka Fellow and the First International Fellow hosted by the Global Fund for Children in Washington DC. She enjoys travelling, working in cafes and open spaces, unstructured work hours, cooking and feeding people and embodies a hearty laugh that can travel distances!
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Ashoka
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Comments
Greetings from the US: I just wanted to make contact with you as my project to improve community well being and mental health is also called Dream Catcher! Maybe you will take a look at it. I would love your input.