The DREAM Program, The Blue Wagon, October, 2012

The Blue Wagon Alumni Newsletter – October 2012

Inside This Issue Amuse Bouche & Announcements DREAM Welcomes Back Co-founder Mike Foote A Big Night Out in Boston Connecting with the Community Catamountain Classic Recap

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AMUSE BOUCHE

By Adam Goldfarb, Alumni Council President Hey DREAMers!

This year's Alumni Appeal is well under way, and we are asking that each and every college raise funds from at least 25% of its total donor body. That means we're looking for 250 donors overall, so show some school pride and help your alma mater get to its 25% goal! DREAM is actively expanding, mentees are heading off to college and we want to give them help, and we want to offer mentors grants as well. Your support, as always, will help DREAM do great things.

You've hopefully by now already heard about the Appeal from your college representative, but in case you forgot, head to the beautiful, shiny, new and fantastic website at dreamprogram.org/support and click DONATE! We're counting on you.

Make DREAMs happen,

ANNOUNCEMENTS 1. Thanks to the tremendous work of folks like Daniel Shear at Tamarack Media, DREAM has a spanking new website that is sharp, snappy, and even streams updates from the Facebook page. Check it out at dreamprogram.org! For new and old Alumni alike, it’s now super easy to update your contact info online at dreamprogram.org/alumni/update-your-contact-information when you graduate or your address changes. The new site also has section dedicated exclusively for Alumni, detailing the structure of the Alumni Organization & Council, including each of the Initiative Heads and their responsibilities, at dreamprogram.org/alumni/council.

DREAM

Adam Goldfarb Alumni Council Prez adam.k.goldfarb@gmail.com

2. With fall now in full swing, Boston University DREAM will be selling DREAM sweatpants! They’ll be navy blue with yellow writing, and the cost is $35.00 including shipping. If you are interested, please email Bella at gsandieg@bu.edu with your name, size, email, address, contact number, and if you'd like, which program you were affiliated with by Nov. 15. Thanks in advance!

3. DREAM wants to give a HUGE shout out to rock star Alum Josh Warren – congrats on the wedding!

4. Going to be in the Burlington area next weekend? If so, the Teen Futures Retreat is happening on Saturday November 3rd to the 4th at the King Street Center in Burlington. The retreat is an event aimed at providing teenage DREAMers a safe and constructive space to collaborate with each other, mentors, and community resources. Its goals are to empower DREAMers to explore their future with the encouragement of mentoring, leadership development, forward thinking and self-reflection. If your mentee is now a teenager, give them a call and see if they’re going. Of if you happen to be in the area and want to stop by, contact the Burlington DREAM Office by emailing info@dreamprogram.org.

DREAM Welcomes Back Mike Foote!

By Mike Ewan, Program Director The DREAM Program is happy to announce that original DREAMer and founder, Mike Foote, is rejoining the DREAM Staff as our first Director of Strategy and Growth. From 1999 until this year, Mike has supported DREAM as a mentor, a Program Director and a Board member. He is a founding member of DREAM at Dartmouth College and a co-founder of The DREAM Program, Inc. Since leaving the staff in 2005, Mike completed a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington's Dale J. Evans School of Public Affairs, ran Matt Dunne's primary campaign for Governor of Vermont, helped launch a socially responsible nonpartisan political organization, and most recently was a senior consultant with Wellspring Consulting, a strategy consulting firm that serves the social sector.

This is an amazing opportunity for both Mike and for DREAM, and we look forward to working with him to share DREAM with more children, families and communities across the region. Mike will be working out of our office in Boston, so feel free to reach out to him with your ideas for where DREAM should go next. He can be reached at mfoote@dreamprogram.org. Congratulations Mike!

DREAM’s Big Night Out in Boston

By Mike Foote, Director of Strategy & Growth

DREAM’s second annual Big Night Out in Boston was a huge success with over 70 people packing a private function room at the Rattlesnake Bar and Grill. There was live music, appetizers, drinks and good times. It was another landmark in DREAM’s continued growth in the city.

Rachel Lieberman, DREAM’s new Boston Director was on hand to meet a number of Alumni, including Chris Higgins and Mike Lefevbre from St. Michael’s College, Scott Hess, Kate Haggerty and Floyd Franks from UVM, Lindsey Dean, Chad Butt and AJ LeGaye from Dartmouth College, Josh Nagle and Brooke Zambroski from Champlain College and many other alumni. Chris Higgins from St. Michael’s was a rock star, bringing in almost $1,000 of support from his network alone for the event.

Special thanks to DREAM’s Boston Finance Committee, in particular Emily Haranas, for organizing such a successful event and helping DREAM reach more children in Boston.

Alumni & friends of DREAM pack the house at last week’s fundraising event at Rattlesnake Bar & Grill in Boston.

Connecting with Community – A Middlebury Campus Editorial

By Simran Sabharwal, Middlebury ‘14

This article was originally published by The Middlebury Campus at http://middleburycampus.com/article/connecting-with-community-dream/.

Directing through Recreation, Education, Adventure, and Mentoring (DREAM) is about building community, and in my opinion, working towards building community has been the most important and most rewarding experience I have encountered. There is a beautiful old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I believe that this proverb illuminates what DREAM is fundamentally about — providing the necessary human connections and support to foster community. Without a safe, supportive environment and a network of people to lean on, it is difficult to find one’s place, to grow and to achieve one’s dreams.

During my first semester at Middlebury, I was fortunate enough to have come across DREAM – a Vermont-based non-profit organization that fosters community between college students and local families and children from affordable housing neighborhoods. When I signed up for DREAM, I had no idea that it would come to be such an important source of community for me.

I had enjoyed working with kids throughout high school, so when I approached the DREAM table at the Middlebury Action Fair, I decided this group mentoring organization sounded like a great opportunity to get involved in community service and get to know some incredible peers.

But beyond fulfilling these expectations, DREAM made my transition to college much smoother. I now had a community that I could connect with beyond the “campus bubble.” Every Friday I can look forward to seeing a group of terrific, energetic kids, their down-to-earth families and a consistent group of college mentors — mostly upper-classmen — who helped bring DREAM to Middlebury.

At the first DREAM Friday meeting of the semester, we had a family BBQ, bringing together new and old mentors, our mentees (ages 4-14) and their families. The kids’ excitement was simply contagious. Before I knew it I was playing tag games and Frisbee and feeling overwhelmingly included. I felt like this was a space where I could completely be myself and I loved that others felt the same.

During spring of last semester we had a retreat for DREAM mentors and had asked recent alumni to send us a few words about what DREAM means to them. One of my close friends, Laura Williams ’11, who I met through DREAM during my first year wrote back, “Ultimately, DREAM is both a collective and individual commitment to come back, Friday after Friday, and devote ourselves to our mentee communities, each other and the spirit of DREAM — humbleness, goofiness and service.”

As Williams mentions, consistency is an essential part of DREAM. Although we are a group mentoring organization, we depend on each individual mentee and mentor to have a successful Friday activity, and in the long run, foster a strong, supportive community. When mentors go abroad or graduate, the kids we work with feel their absence.

But the beauty of DREAM is that it carries on, year after year. We welcome new mentors, fresh ideas and bigger dreaming.

Connecting with Community - Continued Last January we also expanded our community of mentees and doubled the number of kids in our program. A few months after getting to know our new mentees and introducing them to DREAM, we had a spring culminating event, which went extremely well. We bonded on an overnight camping trip and through everything from the planning to making s’mores by a campfire, we developed a new sense of community.

I know I feel incredibly thankful to be a part of such a group, and though our kids may not say so every day, they expressed their appreciation for their mentors, for each other and for DREAM that night we went camping. I am so proud of DREAM as an organization for the trust and genuine relationships that it builds in this way. The fact that our mentors come to DREAM Fridays and to bigger events regularly with such excitement and earnestness means a lot to our kids. The fact that DREAM has been a part of my college experience certainly makes all the difference for me, and the same goes for other mentors in our program.

One overarching goal of the DREAM program as an organization is fostering a supportive community. Whether we acknowledge it or not, I believe that community plays a fundamental role in our lives every day. When we are going through a particularly rough time it makes all the difference to have someone by our side, reminding us to recognize and grasp the opportunities that come our way, to stay positive, to keep dreaming, to keep achieving. I cannot begin to imagine life without the support of family, friends, neighbors or any such network of people. Perhaps that is why I feel such a strong connection and appreciation towards the DREAM program. As a DREAM mentor I find that the more I try to deliver joy, support and love to the community, the more joy, support and love I reap.

UVM DREAMers complete the Catamountain Classic in Avi’s Memory

By Mike Ewan, Program Director On September 29th and 30th, University of Vermont DREAMers, in partnership with the UVM Outing Club and the Dewey House, hosted and completed the first annual Catamountain Classic. The event, inspired by Avi Kurganoff, challenged participants to join in an effort to raise funds by hiking the entire length of the Long Trail in one weekend. The hike was to benefit a scholarship fund to provide DREAM mentees the opportunity to participate in an Outward Bound course, a program Kurganoff was influenced by and participated in as a youth. Kurganoff, a former DREAM mentor, passed away in March of 2012, but his fellow DREAM mentors and Outing Club members helped complete his vision and successfully raised enough money to offer two scholarships in this inaugural year of the event.

On the first day of the event, 40 participants, including Avi's family, DREAM mentors, DREAM teen mentees, members of the Dewey House and the Outing Club, hiked their segment of the Classic to Little Rock Pond. In addition to the actual hike, DREAM's Elm Street Local Program prepared mentees for the hike the week prior by planning a scavenger hunt through Centennial Woods. The scavenger hunt was part of what will be a bi-semester outing into the woods called “Avi's Adventures" – programming aimed at exposing DREAM mentees to the outdoors, teaching them outdoor skills and empowering them to DREAM big.

Checkout more information the DREAM website @ http://dreamprogram.org/about/announcement/uvm-dreamerscomplete-catamountain-classic-avis-memory. The webpage includes a 5-minute video of highlights from the event, as well as an additional article describing UVM Mentor Hillary Laggis contributions to the event.