Pine Meadow/Peter Coe DREAM Quarterly Report June - August 2016- 2017
Greetings from DREAM! The Pine Meadow/Peter Coe DREAM Program had a great summer filled with great activities! Here is a summary of what took place this quarter.
Program Highlights ● DREAM received a grant from AmeriCorps National, and formed our own AmeriCorps Program named DREAMCorps. We are thrilled for the many opportunities and support this grant will provide. ● Starting in June, the Summer DREAM Program in Pine Meadow/Peter Coe Community was led by AmeriCorps member Katie Doyle. Lydia Schneider and Elm Street mentors and summer AmeriCorps members Dilian Cupp and Meg Rowe also helped out with summer activities in Middlebury. ● Summer DREAM came to a close in the beginning of August. The DREAM Office celebrated the summer members and staff with a celebratory barbecue. ● On August 28th, 12 full time AmeriCorps members began their service in the DREAMCorps National AmeriCorps Program. This included 6 in Vermont, 5 in Philadelphia, and 2 in Boston. ● Tara Santi and Chris Adamo have become the new co-chairs for the Middlebury DREAM program! ● Regular DREAM Fridays will resume on September 29th after mentors return to school and spend some time recruiting new mentors for the upcoming year.
Mentees Total: 14
Mentors Total: 8
Weekly Programming with Children ● This quarter, Summer Community AmeriCorps Member Katie planned themed weeks for activities in Middlebury such as ‘Green Mountain Adventuring Week’ and ‘Try New Things Week’. ● During ‘Green Mountain Adventuring Week’, the group went hiking at Mount Philo, Sterling Pond, and enjoyed a trip to the lake!
● The group explored outside their comfort zones and took a beginner Spanish class, had a picnic lunch together, made play-dough, attended a Sheldon Museum Concert, and hiked Snake Mountain during ‘Try New Things Week’. ● Other activities the mentees participated in throughout the quarter included an awesome kickball tournament, a pond biology exploration, making a movie, visiting the horses at Morgan Horse Farm, finger painting, an egg drop experiment, and a soda rocket building experiment! Special Events for Children and Mentors: ● DREAM received a Summer Readers’ grant from CLiF (Children’s Literacy Foundation). Local author and illustrator, Jason Chin, gave a presentation about his books and his writing/illustrating process to 30 youth from our Burlington area programs. Capacity Building and Fundraising: ● Through our annual summer appeal we raised close to $50K. ● DREAM spent a lot of time this quarter investing time in laying the foundation for our new National AmeriCorps grant. ● We received a challenge grant of $10K to purchase a van for transportation. ● DREAM organized our first (of what we hope will be annual) fundraising event by participating in the Race to the Top of Vermont. Staff, AmeriCorps members, board members, and alumni all hiked/biked/or ran to the top of Mount Mansfield and raised over $7K! ● We welcomed a new program site, Applegate Housing Community in Bennington, VT this summer! Youth were able to participate in our summer programming and six have signed up to participate in school-year DREAM. Camp: ●
●
This year we hosted 79 campers over the course of the summer representing EVERY Vermont DREAM community!! About one fifth of the campers had never been to camp before! In late August we broke ground for the lodge! The lodge will give us capacity to host more youth for longer periods of time year-round. In addition to the lodge, a staff cabin also went up thanks to the help of our awesome summer AmeriCorps members!
Teen Accomplishments:
● ● ●
●
Seven teens participated in a week long College Road Trip where they visited nine colleges all over Vermont and ended their trip with a weekend at Six Flags in New York. Summer members ran teen specific programming once a week including trips to Summervale, teen talks, and bowling trip. The Dartmouth programs and the Bennington and Poultney programs both went on High Adventures to California! o Twelve teens and nine mentors from Dartmouth spent ten days exploring San Francisco, zip-lining through Redwoods, and camping in Big Basin State Park. o Two teens from Bennington, two teens from Poultney, and five mentors spent a week exploring Los Angeles! Six teens served as Counselors-in-Training at Camp DREAM this summer, and another 6 teens served as Mentors-in-Training during community programming!
Alumni: ● Alumni are investing in a new alumni management system so to help alumni better stay in touch and provide more career-oriented resources to our DREAMers. Office: ● ● ●
We welcomed Mike Ewan to our team as our Chief Operations Officer! Through our new National AmeriCorps grant we brought on fourteen AmeriCorps members across our 3 regions.
Thank you for your ongoing support of DREAM. If you would like additional or more detailed information, please contact me by email or by phone. You can always look back at past reports or other programs’ reports by going to: http://dreamprogram.org/mentoring/vermont/local-program-reports.
DREAM big, Katie Nash Program Empowerment Director knash@dreamprogram.org (802)338- 8979