MIT Solve

Solution Overview & Team Lead Details

Our Organization

Dreami

What is the name of your solution?

Experiential education via scalable mentorship

Provide a one-line summary of your solution.

Making experiential education and career readiness for students more scalable and engaging through the power of hyper-focused technology

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

Even before COVID-19, 1 in 6 children were facing a mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. These rates have only increased (UCONN estimates it has doubled) due to the isolation of the pandemic. A McKinsey & Co. analysis found the pandemic set students by 4-5 months in reading and math during 2020-2021. This tends to extend to social skill loss as well. Moreover, with 1 out of 1,000 students losing a caregiver in the US, the negative impact to students' engagement, learning and development has only multiplied. In underserved communities, students face the brunt of psyco-social impacts that the pandemic has imposed on the unpredictable learning and family environment. What students are especially missing out on are the mentors in their life: whether in the form of teachers, school staff, or coaches. Mentorship is a largely untapped opportunity for experiential learning and social development, which has been strained due to the virtual environment of the pandemic.

What is your solution?

Dreami makes mentorship easy and scalable. Dreami helps teachers, families and school personnel to craft, connect and track mentorship relationships for students. Dreami consists of the training for mentors and mentees, intelligent matching based off of the student's goals, easy scheduling and a safe, monitored messaging and videoconferencing environment. Here's how Dreami works:

1. Mentors and mentees fill out a matching quiz on the platform to share skills, goals and personal interests. Through the platform, students get matched off of several parameters to the best possible mentor for their interests. Typically this is done in arduous spreadsheets that are difficult to manage and do not guarantee a high match satisfaction.

2. Mentees can easily message and schedule time with their mentor in a monitored and safe environment. All message content can be viewed by teachers and admins to ensure the utmost safety for the student. Families will typically attend mentorship sessions as well.

3. Admins and families can view the value of the mentorship meetings for the student so it is ensured that there is high engagement and interest from the student. Dreami has a mentor care team to make sure that the student is fully engaged.

Dreami trains the mentors and students on how to make the most out of the mentorship program so that way the utmost engagement is prioritized. This is game changing, as what was once an ad-hoc, manual and time bound opportunity has now been scaled, automated and improved.

This helps the parents as well, as the student does not have to rely on their social capital to get the development, advice and career readiness they deserve.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

We highly focus on under-represented students or under-served communities. Since we are a tech enabled platform, we are not geographically constrained to a state or city.

We typically focus on students between the ages of 15-18 as they are focusing on college applications, careers and pathways after school and the inflection point at which hyper-focused mentorship can truly impact the trajectory of their lives. They are currently under-served due to lack of social capital of their families and even teachers.

Dreami breaks down the social barriers to high-quality experiential education and relevant mentorship. No matter who the families have in their network, or who the school has in their direct network, every student deserves the guidance, support and emotional development.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

As a South Asian female with immigrant parents, I did not have an extensive network of career support and advice during the ages of 15-18. In fact, I struggled extensively with mental health issues (depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation) because of the pressure of exploring my career path without much support externally. I can relate to this very problem very personally and I understand the incredible stress it can place on students. To further understand this need of the communities we hope to impact, we are constantly on the ground speaking to actual students and families about their challenges with mentorship, career readiness and guidance during these difficult times. They are also our pilot users!

Since we have a product background, our users help us to craft our product constantly. At least 5 hours/week is dedicated to user interviews and feedback.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Facilitate meaningful social-emotional learning among underserved young people.

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Redwood City, CA, USA

Our solution's stage of development:

Growth

How many people does your solution currently serve?

1600

Why are you applying to Solve?

I am very thankful to be considered for this incredible peer network of social impact educational organizations. We are hoping to establish strategic partnerships with educational institutions for further pilots domestically. Solve's network and technical support will be invaluable for our growth truly create a differentiated and impactful solution. Our main challenge that we hope to overcome with Solve's support is running successful pilots and rolling out to full scale deployments.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.)

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

ASHIMA SHARMA