#DREAMenCASA

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989, I joined the Peace Corps in Micronesia as a teacher and youth developer. My experiences there ignited a life-long passion for education. Through a Peace Corps Fellows Scholarship, I pursued a Masters in TESOL at Teacher’s College, Columbia University and taught full-time at Taft High School in the South Bronx. As a leader of a restructuring process, I founded the first small school within Taft called the Academy of the Arts. After receiving my MBA from Columbia Business School in 2001, I became the Principal of School of the Future (SOF), a model school of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Since 2009, I have led the DREAM Project, including our #DREAMenCASA program, and focused on developing a culture of reading and replicating DREAM’s high quality Montessori pre-school programs throughout the Dominican Republic, my truest passion. 

Our collective lives have changed since COVID-19, primarily by staying healthy and distancing at home. At DREAM, more than 8,000 of the disadvantaged children and youth we serve are unable to actively receive an education. Our response has been to continue providing quality education and resources to students. We accomplish this through five #DREAMenCASA programs: We have taken learning online, providing books and other educational resources through our online portal. Our students are engaging in virtual classrooms refining their skills. We also provide #DREAMenCASA LIVE, a virtual space where parents can consult our staff on different topics. Our staff are also working closely to create physical educational resources through #DREAMPaqs. Lastly, we are teaming up with coalition of local non-profits to provide food resources to our communities. This response empowers our youth, elevating families and the communities in which they live, through continued learning and a proactive solution. 

We are keeping disadvantaged youth healthy and learning. COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on families within our 27 communities (80% unemployment), leaving our 8,000 children and youth quarantined at home. Food is a critical resource to maintain safe and healthy families, but so are books, online learning resources and materials to stimulate these young minds. DREAM is proud to provide all of these resources to these 8,000 youth, while they respect existing quarantines.

DREAM Founder and Chairman, Michel Zaleski, MIT alum, established DREAM with an understanding that a lack of quality education was responsible for much of the poverty across the country. Together with the Executive Board, filled with both Dominican, Dominican American and International volunteers, #DREAMenCASA launched with a donation, delivering food and materials to more than 350 families its first week. 

Each #DREAMPaq includes rice, cooking oil, beans, pasta, oatmeal, canned food, and an educational pack for kids with books, crayons, weekly learning plans, pencils and information on how to engage online. #DREAMenCASA is a strategy created to help parents educate their kids at home, an online parent resource with books and activities you can download at any time, any day, anywhere.

#DREAMenCASA is a program that has been created to fill the needs of 8,000 children and youth, along with vulnerable family members during these times of uncertainty, by providing high quality educational resources both physically and online, along with food resources as part of a larger coalition of local non-profits. #DREAMenCASA serves DREAM students and families who are most in need of resources, which the government can not provide. We keep families safe, children learning and support thousands that have no other resource during this global emergency. We get children reading, creating, problem solving, which inspires more learning and offers parents and other family members much needed time to focus on other household needs. We make sure a healthy diet offers these families the chance to weather the current storm and not force them deeper into the cycle of poverty. 

Our program is currently being operated within the 27 communities DREAM serves throughout the Dominican Republic, serving more than 8,000 children and youth directly, along with their families indirectly. These communities live in varying levels of poverty, with approximately 20% (Haitian immigrants, Dominicans of Haitian decent and Dominicans) living in extreme poverty. Twenty-four of these communities live in rural areas, where government services tend to be non-existent. The three urban communities fall within the category of impoverished and vulnerable communities. 

We work closely with community members, leaders and public school staff to assess local needs, establish quality education programs that address those needs, and provide continuous support to schools, teachers and community members to ensure success over the long-term. This is what sets us apart from other organizations. We live and work within these communities, with our over 100 staff members already being community members. 

COVID-19 has had a disastrous impact on these communities, leaving unemployment as high as 80% and the majority of families unable to provide basic nutrition. #DREAMenCASA addresses that need by delivering food directly to these families, in addition to the educational resources that keep the youth learning, engaged and ready to re-enter the system. 

Our transformative education programs extend from early childhood through young adulthood, empowering at-risk children and youth to create a better future for themselves and their families through high quality education, youth development and community enrichment. We ensure successful results through careful analysis, a commitment to learning, and continuous improvement. Our innovative approach effectively addresses local needs and can be replicated throughout high poverty global communities. During this time of uncertainty, we are ensuring children, youth and their families continue to have access to high quality education materials and resources while social distancing and quarantined in their homes. 

The COVID-19 pandemic forced all of us to collectively assess both our personal and professional lives. From one day to the next, the alarming speed the virus spread and needs of developing countries jumped substantially. At DREAM, we looked at the vulnerability of our 27 communities and understood that food shortages would be the most significant threat to health, security and survival. The government imposed a quarantine immediately and we understood this also meant learning would take a backseat. As the quarantines were extended, we learned that the lack of resources was having a negative impact on our families, children needed resources, engagement and households needed a sustainable solution to no income and no access to healthy food. That was when our team came together and we created #DREAMenCASA, five critical programs to ensure our community members could stay home, stay healthy and stay learning. 

I love our communities! It sounds simple, but our 8,000 kids and 100 staff are from these communities and so am I. As an organization, we have invested so much time and energy into making them a better place, providing opportunity, empowering and ending the cycle of poverty so many find themselves in. My family is integrated, our staff, our volunteers and I consider these communities our home. With more than 8,000 children and youth served on any given day, so many of the faces I see are part of this extended family. I see youth engaged with work, with continued education that I know we helped support. Once the pandemic started to strip opportunity from those beautiful faces, I understood that we had to create a strategy that would not just maintain the programs and work we had accomplished collectively.

I believe we are living in a time of great change, where pre-existing ideas, systems and resources will change dramatically. Clearly, the amount of time I have lived in the Dominican Republic, my relationships and the experience I have gained in those nearly 20 years are critical. That being said, I do not think that is why my position at DREAM and leadership of this program sets me apart. We have to act, that is the key. So many organizations are waiting for answers to appear, promises to be kept, that they are almost paralyzed. Many use the excuse that quarantines and social distancing leave them with no option but to wait until this storm has passed. I feel the storm is exactly when we are needed most. The families we serve can not generate money, they are not working, they live in poverty and have no savings, so it is government support (as a developing nation, this is not sufficient) or people with skills, privilege and passion to step up. Millions of children are home, not engaged and their parents are unable to provide the education they desperately need. I have been fortunate to receive an excellent education, but my experience in developing communities is now my greatest strength. From the Peace Corps to the NYC Public School system, I truly believe all of those collective experiences, success and failures, place me in the unique position to provide leadership for these communities, which are now part of my home.

My biggest adversities have stemmed from living and working full time in developing countries. From Micronesia in the Peace Corps, to my current position in the Dominican Republic, I have had many obstacles in delivering services to communities in need. Working with government institutions, creating agreements and permission for projects has been as difficult as any other challenge we face. Corruption is part, being a woman too, so I have to be creative. Positive interactions with all in the various ministries is key. Regardless, bureaucracy, centralized decision making and lack of urgency delay desperately needed projects. I do not have a magic formula to unravel this, but being flexible and not taking it personally are keys to success. I am very persistent and I don't like NO. No, we can't change, no, we always do it this way. In many ways, it is not a good trait, but when running an innovative organization, it helps me. I question how to do things differently, to improve them. When I hear that it can't be done in a way I envisioned it, being told it is impossible for no good reason, that motivates me even more to find a solution. 

In 2016, our core community had to overcome a natural disaster, extreme flooding that left thousands of families homeless and destitute. Our organization, The DREAM Project, worked hand in hand with the communities of the municipalities of Cabarete and Sosúa, as well as with the Civil Defense and the Air Force, to provide accommodation, food and support to the people who were affected by the floods, caused by torrential rains. DREAM Project provided emergency accommodation to more than 150 members of the Colonia Nueva community who had been displaced from their housing, supplying food with the support of local businesses and coordinating donations with district mayors. Once the physical threat was over, we sourced partnerships to provide more than 2,000 families with mattresses, food stock, hygiene and educational resources to get them back in their homes and back on track. This was brutal, all our core community members were impacted, most lost everything they owned. As is often the case, the government needed help and time was of the essence. I understood that my relationships could bring key partners together and that my voice would resonate with the community...so I stood up and did just that. 

DREAM is both a US 501c3 and Dominican ONG, legally registered and operating programs in both countries. 

Learning at home does not sound innovative to most in the first world, but it is a privilege during pandemic quarantines and physical isolation. All schools and learning institutions have been shut down in the Dominican Republic, which is key for working parents in need of childcare, multiple meals daily, social interaction and ensuring COVID-19 does not stagnate education for longer than it needs to. Children and youth need to remain at home, but for families living in varying levels of poverty and extreme poverty, this is not as simple as it sounds. Small homes, cramped quarters and lack of basic services (running water, sanitation, etc.) complicate this situation even more. Therefore, the innovation in #DREAMenCASA stems from the need for these vulnerable children and youth to stay isolated, but to explore through learning more than ever before. That starts with reading, which in a country with substandard literacy levels, is not an easy task. Our project makes reading fun, it stimulates creativity and allows our students to escape the physical reality they are in and enter new worlds. Their unique need for that stimulation helps, but our literacy specialists add new dimensions to books, through digital storytelling, online resources, additional activities and workshops, book clubs and online, social networking. This is why #DREAMenCASA innovates. 

Our theory of change—the essence of what we do and how change happens—is centered on supporting children and youth at multiple phases of their lives, beginning at age 2 and ending at age 25.

Please access DREAM Theory of Change

DREAM’s comprehensive education programs work with more than 8,000 children and youth between the ages of 2 and 24. DREAM’s programs provide over 1,000,000 hours of high-quality teaching divided into five areas: literacy, early childhood education, workforce development, Academy of Bachata, community programs and Global Connections Groups. We develop the skills, dreams, and ambitions of our students to enable them to have more productive lives. Our long-term goal is to inspire other communities and support them in replicating our high-quality programs. With our parent education and community libraries, we estimate our indirect reach to be over 10,000 community members. In 2019-20, DREAM employed 107 full-time staff and over 137 including part-time staff and interns. Due to the current international public health situation, DREAM will be reducing programs and staff to have 87 full-time staff and 91 including interns.#DREAMenCASA provides resources for all of these groups. 

Our focus as an organization is quality education through carefully designed programs and community empowerment. We do not consider a rapid scaling up of participants our main priority, but in one year, we plan to expand the number to 9,000 children and youth. 

Finally, we have an Executive Board goal of providing these opportunities to more than 25,000 children and youth in five years. 

DREAM will nourish our students, communities and educators and ensure that they have everything needed to move our mission and forward. These goals will be addressed this year and all will be implemented within five years: 

#DREAMenCASA. Ensuring the 8,000 children and youth we currently serve will have all the resources they need if quarantines and isolation continues. 

Improving our staff and educator's understanding and ability to provide for our youth. Human rights, early grade writing, special education, storytelling, design of virtual classrooms, mindfulness, creating educational spaces for parents and children, creative writing, WORD, and a librarian course.

Teacher Development. Improving the personal development of our teachers by teaching in a constructivist approach + personalized correction.

Supporting our children and youth through constant communication and meetings.

Workforce Development. A survey will be prepared by DREAM psychologists for workforce development students and graduates and carried out to determine the number of people in need of food, psychological support and evaluation.

Communication. We will be forming a committee, staff-led, that will work closely with the Executive Director and board members to ensure that the voices of our staff are being heard. They will host staff town-halls with the purpose of giving a safe space to express concerns and suggestions for making us a more inclusive organization.  

Curriculum Development. We will be enhancing our curriculum to educate our students and parents about their civil rights and black history, as a way to empower them to make conscious decisions about their child's education. 

The barriers that currently exist will only grow as the pandemic and resulting economic fallout make our children, youth and community members more vulnerable. Fundraising will be more difficult than any time in our twenty year history, with individual giving, grants, events and government resources limited. As we all know, this fallout will trickle down and the impact on developing nations like the Dominican Republic will be extremely challenging. The high rate of unemployment will lead to security issues, public unrest and a lack of opportunity. Poverty will grow exponentially and most industrialized countries will look inward, ignoring the needs of these impoverished populations. Corruption has a good chance to expand as well, which will add to a lack of resources for the communities we serve. Although many first world countries will recover with the distribution of a vaccine, developing countries will suffer far longer, with tourism and foreign investment taking a back seat to a less expansive agenda for most wealthy countries. Our mission and vision, along with #DREAMenCASA will be more important than ever. 

Solutions will be hard to come by, but I (and our leadership) am confident the challenges listed above will be met. Innovation will need to continue in our classrooms, either physically or virtually, but also with funding and expansion. Our staff will ensure we continue to pivot and provide high quality education to our children and youth. So many resources can be accessed online, as well as training, professional development and innovation. Our Executive Board will use all of their resources to find funding, through their networks and by coming together to create new opportunities. New supporters will be cultivated, events will go online and our programs will continue to see the needs of our communities, which will create new grant opportunities. 

The DREAM Project, like most success stories, started as a great idea put into action by a small group of passionate people. As we have grown and continued to educate more and more youth, that small group has become a movement. This support comes from all types of people: from our local Partners to our Corporate Ambassadors, from international organizations to grassroots activists, from 6-year-olds donating pencils to 60-year-olds building libraries. All of these people share one thing: the inspiring belief that all children deserve a quality education and that learning can change lives, create better futures, and combat the challenges of poverty. We partner with thousands of small donors, hundreds of larger gift givers, 12 key corporate partners, all supporting our programs through specialized campaigns or unrestricted gifts. We have five committees running annual events to raise funds, promoting our cause and bringing international supporters together. Education is at the heart of DREAM and we partner with scores of schools and foundations, such as Columbia Teacher's College and Open Society, along with even more high schools and non profits. These educational partners share best practices, research and volunteers. We partner with the Dominican Ministry of Education, USAID and the US Embassy, which allow us to expand and reach large numbers of children and youth in need.

As an organization,DREAM has grown from one location to now helping more than 8,000 children, youth and young adults receive a better education through its 14 programs in 27 different communities. We add value to these communities through our programs, which focus on early childhood education, high quality primary education, and holistic youth development. These programs consist of neo-natal education, preschools, after school supplemental and remedial education, at-risk youth programs, summer schools and camps, fixed and mobile libraries, computer labs, age-appropriate free books for thousands of children, vocational training and much more. We work closely with community members and public school staff to assess local needs, establish quality education programs that address those needs, and provide continuous support to schools, teachers and community members to ensure success over the long-term. This is what sets us apart from other organizations. DREAM is one of the largest employers in the communities in which it works, supporting close to 100 staff and their families.DREAM’s volunteer program is a key factor in its success. Each year, hundreds of international and local volunteers work on specific DREAM projects and programs. Some reside in our communities for a year or longer. From Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz, to the first Dominican-born member of Congress, Adriano Espaillat, to Grammy nominee Leslie Grace, our board consists of artists, athletes, educators and philanthropists leading the charge to educate all Dominican youth.These programs and opportunities offer our communities an escape from the cycle of poverty many find themselves stuck in.

As an education based NGO, we see our financial sustainability differently than other organizations. Our Executive Board has created an endowment, which has been a major reason we have been able to provide for our communities as fundraising has slowed during the pandemic and economic crisis. The forms of earned income we have created, which revolve around volunteer opportunities, has also been impacted by the pandemic, travel restrictions and quarantines. That being said, we do have a development strategy for fiscal 2020-2021 and beyond. This relies on engaging new donors, creating new partnerships with foundations and expanding our relationship with government.

Not a revenue generating organization

The #DREAMenCASA program is scalable, because there are set costs for each of the five components. Our set goal is to receive US$300,000 during fiscal 2020-2021, which would allow us to increase the number of beneficiaries to 9,000. Our Executive Board has committed to covering operating expenses, so this amount would go directly towards the five components of the program. That includes the physical #DREAMPaqs delivered to homes (food and educational resources/materials), continued addition of online educational content, continued #DREAMenCASALive workshops, story hour and training, Workforce Development and DREAM Program online training and our participation in the food program Cabarete Sostenible. 

Please find our complete budget below...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wr87m8e85oefukz/DREAM%20Budget%202020-21%20vs%202019-20.xlsx?dl=0

The Elevate Prize would create a seismic shift in how our organization (DREAM) provides resources for thousands of vulnerable children, youth and their families. The specific program, #DREAMenCASA is operational and already saving lives, while educating our youth. Still, the partnership, which comes with the award, would be transformative on multiple levels. As described previously, the barriers we face are substantial. Poverty, corruption, isolation, injustice and inefficiency are the primary reasons we are not able to expand our work and offer these programs to more community members. The prize would change all of that immediately. Our mission is to empower communities through education, to lift themselves out of poverty. This would inject our organization with the funding we need to have a direct impact on the replicable programs we already have designed and operate. In particular, we would scale #DREAMenCASA to our goal of 9,000 youth and their families right away. This would ensure that these families would have a healthy foundation to continue to keep safe, along with the educational materials and resources needed to stimulate these young minds. The corruption would be side stepped, as we would be able to offer these programs directly to communities, without government interference, only non monetary partnership, also ensuring efficiency. These impoverished, isolated families would be able to access our services, giving them a connection to the outside world, escaping the injustice isolation often creates, as social activity remains stunted by quarantines and the pandemic.

As described above, our work must overcome poverty, corruption, isolation, injustice and inefficiency, some of the primary reasons we are not able to expand our work and offer these programs to more community members. Still, sustainability and awareness are also two important areas we would like to improve. the more donors we reach, the more education models we can share. We are results driven, so monitoring and evaluation are part of everything we do, but those are areas that can always be enhanced with expert guidance. Marketing has become an area we need to improve and that generally is a result of funding. DREAM is extremely interested in modernizing our marketing, building more digital resources and mentoring our younger, community based IT staff. Finally, we would love to explore adding new board members. Our Founder is an MIT Alum and more support in leadership would be welcome.

There are many organizations we admire and wish to partner with. DREAM has been fortunate to build relationships with stellar universities, but as we grow, these partnerships must as well. Some of the organizations we look to partner with are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Partners of the Americas, The IMF and any university open to sending volunteers to the Dominican Republic in order to research, share best practices and develop opportunity for our communities in need. The Gates Foundation has a health focus, but also fits our work in terms of education. We share a common vision when it comes to empowerment, which would fit well. Partners of the Americas shares a current workforce development program, A Ganar, so we do work with them. DREAM would love to explore even more programs, as education and at risk youth programs are a focus of both organizations. The IMF currently has funding opportunities to support innovation in COVID-19 relief, which our #DREAMenCASA program directly supports. Finally, at the heart of DREAM you will find a volunteer. We launched our programs with 6 Dartmouth volunteers, spending a semester working with children in public schools. Marketing, IT, monitoring/evaluation and development all are areas we would welcome university partnerships in.