CTS 2019 took last year’s learnings and outcomes a bit deeper by stressing on the urgency of why it is important to prepare young people from developing countries, such as India to thrive. The event was designed with young people leading the sessions, with Day 1 focusing on the problem, with speakers exploring the 100-year-gap between children in developing countries and developed countries in education levels; nuancing child adversity, leading to a failure to thrive and determining causes of what keeps our young people from thriving in the rapidly, changing world. Day 2 attempted to answer the problems posed the previous day, with a government leader explaining how innovative models like the Happiness Curriculum, along with a large focus on better school infrastructure could be solutions. Other innovations like the Arc of Transformation and a scale to assess life skills in young people, were also explored as a means of helping young people thrive. Through these various discussions, keynotes, stories from our young people, interactive learning platforms and experiential activities, the conference brought a diverse set of stakeholders to unite and share their experiences and learnings, taking the discussion one step further from them just articulating the problems at hand.

Click on the link to capture the spirit of the two eventful days of the Change the Script 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnidJdt_Q3o

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The Career Connect Center hosted an event called ‘Celebrating You!’ where we brought together close to 100 young graduates who have spent a minimum of three years or more in any of our skill development programmes. This event was designed to acknowledge the graduates’ life skills and intentions of making healthy career choices, create a platform where they could share their stories and celebrate who they have become.

Neelambika and Rajeswari are young graduates of Dream a Dream. Neelambika has just completed her Master’s in Biotechnology and is working for a local NGO while also exploring an entrepreneurial path. Rajeshwari is a beautician and on the course of starting her own salon while Vaani has just joined our programme and is being inspired by the alumni around her. Vishwa Dewan followed his passion and became an animator and graphic artist. Working as a Creative Team Lead at a company in Bangalore, he has also taught animation to other young people at Dream a Dream.

This event brought people like Neelambika, Rajeshwari and Vishwa together to share and celebrate their journeys.

GRADUATION DAY

The After School Life Skills Programme annually hosts, ‘Graduation Day’ to celebrate and motivate the young people who have successfully completed the life skills programme and graduated from the programme. This day was designed with a theme to create awareness amongst young people to save our environment and plant more trees. This year, 824 young people from 22 partner schools successfully completed the programmes and graduated from them.

The graduation day was celebrated with lots of fun and learnings in the form of plays, dance and songs, sharing’s of their learnings with the parents and teachers participating with full enthusiasm and energy. We not only felicitated the young people, we also felicitated the teachers and parents. One of the unique features of this graduation day was that the young alumni graduate volunteered to host the graduation day.

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Their passion for football is what got the young children this far. But even while the young players were preparing to be a part of the festival, we at Dream a Dream faced another challenge – that of raising resources to cover costs for the last leg of the journey to France. Numerous efforts and appeals had still not got us the required funds.

That was until support came our way from the most unexpected quarters. BookASmile, the charity  initiativeby BookMyShow, India’s leading online ticketing platform offered to be the official sponsor for this event!

Dream a Dream has always believed in the strengths of partnerships and when initiatives like BookASmile extend a supporting hand, it only makes our journey of making dreams a reality for young people so much easier to achieve. Today, with that much lesser efforts required from our end in raising the funds, we are able to put all our energies into training our football stars for the tournament.

True to what they say ‘BookASmile’ is helping us in creating smiles for miles. Initiatives such as these are more than welcome and goes a long way in giving young people the opportunity to chase their dreams.

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A brilliant rainbow of carefully picked experiential workshops; the dynamic young duo of Mamata and Rakesh, the anchors of the conference; the beautiful setting at The Ancient School of Wisdom, the friendly team of staff and volunteers from Dream a Dream and enthusiastic delegates contributed to the energy of the conference.

In setting the context for the conference, Vishal Talreja, Co-Founder and CEO of Dream a Dream screened Still Face experiment. This quickly got us to focus on the importance of listening with empathy and validating the feelings of a child. He drew attention to the positive reinforcements that are most often deprived to children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds. To offset this disadvantage and make learning possible, building life skills was presented as an enabler.

Karen Morrison, Co-Author, Making Thinking Visible was the key note speaker on ‘Co-creating the future we dream about’. She interspersed her presentation with wonderful antecedes and quotes that stressed on the importance to understand the child and encourage the inquisitiveness in the child. Some memorable quotes from my notes are:

‘If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got’

‘Don’t accept me as I am’

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

Brilliant panel discussions with four young people moderated by Arjun Durr from Ashoka brought out the challenges in traditional classrooms. As part of their shared vision for learning, Arpit from Muni International School explained how creating a bully free classroom encourages learning. Soumitra, student of class 9 from Dream a Dream programme clarified that ‘being weak and intelligent are the perception of the teacher and not students’. Against the backdrop of the recent floods in Chennai, Akshaya from TVS Academy expressed that education should teach them solve problems. Pallavi, Dream a Dream graduate shared her experience where managing a business enterprise as part of her school curriculum not only helped her to enjoy school but also do well academically. These made us ponder the fundamental premise of ‘Why do we keep children inside four walls to educate?’

An amazing journey of personal exploration by Brinda Jacob, The Studio for Movement, Arts & Therapies with Belinda, Smruthi, Monica and Sudha was an extremely invigorating. The sessions explored the potential of ‘stay in the here & now and tap into what is to discover new insights’. The delegates were left with little option but to dislodge themselves from their comfort zones. We participated in a variety of carefully synchronized and frenzied physical movements, music, photography and arts. This was also a perfect antidote to drive away any post lunch blues of conferences. The session also demonstrated that learning happens in a safe physical, emotional and intellectual spaces.

‘It is no longer about reading out of a textbook and asking children to memorize it, but creating a space for learning through play’ summarizes the innovative approaches and understanding of Reimagining Learning #Play2Learn presented by Zelda Yanovich, Lego Foundation.

A series of parallel breakout sessions deliberated on a range topics that included Visible Thinking, developed at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, ‘Growth and Fixed Mindset’ that affect education of first generation learners from low-income families, creative ways to channelize the interest of the child and children taking on shared responsibility over learning.

The next set of breakout session included making use of school buildings as a learning aid, listening as a tool for learning, the feel, imagine, do and share (FIDS) model of engaging children in solving social issues and ‘co-create workshop’ facilitated by a group of delegates perfectly demonstrated the spirit of the conference. The sessions reinforced the fact that learning does not end in classrooms but happens when one constantly engages with learning.

The conference was a celebration of diversity that left us wanting to know more. I truly believe that we are going back reassured that we are not alone in our journeys of creating joyful experiences for children in reimagine learning.

#ChangeTheScipt is a movement, a though process to create a world where each individual is appreciated for who they are, to change schools so that students may learn new types of knowledge and skills required in an unpredictably changing world. It is a collective committed to providing the right abilities, social and emotional skills for children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds overcome adversity and flourish.

Mahesh Chandrasekar, Director – Research & Advocacy, Dream A Dream

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