Windsor quarterly report 2016 2017

dreamprogram.org The DREAM Program @DREAMprogram

The Village Mentoring Organization

Windsor DREAM Quarterly Report June - August 2016- 2017 Greetings from DREAM! The Windsor-Union Square DREAM program has finished up another wonderful semester of activities. Here is a summary of all the Windsor-Union Square DREAM happenings from the last quarter.

Highlights from the quarter include: 

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In June we kicked off our summer programming with our two AmeriCorps members, Mona Abdelghani and Nakaya Mitchell. Both will be leading adventures during the day for all three of our Dartmouth programs!

In June summer DREAM at Dartmouth also started! Mentors will be continuing to provide Friday programming during the summer months.

High Adventure happened this June! Mentors brought 12 teens to San Francisco for 10 days. They visited museums, explored the city, and they spent 2 days camping in Big Basin State Park. Everyone had an amazing adventure!

In July all of our youth had the opportunity to attend a week long session at Camp DREAM! Mona and Nakaya, our summer AmeriCorps members, brought the youth to the Montshire museum, a cooking class with Willing Hands, swimming in local lakes, a trip to Hampton Beach, and held a pancake breakfast for all the youth!

In August the summer AmeriCorps members lead two Hampton beach trips happened for teens and the younger youth in our programs In August DREAM celebrated all its summer AmeriCorps members and Program Empowerment Directors who will be moving on in August!

In August we have Mona Abdelghani joining us as our new Program Empowerment Director for our Dartmouth College programs!

Participants- LOOK ON ROSTER FOR THESE NUMBERS Mentees Mentors Total: 19 Total: 22 Fridays: 

The through the months of June-July mentors played games on the green on campus, and held baking activities! Every Friday differed in games and group activities lead by the summer mentors!

Office: 30 Community Drive, South Burlington, VT | Mail: P.O. Box 361, Winooski, VT 05404 │ (802) 338-8979 | info@dreamprogram.org

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Mona and Nakaya, Summer Americorps Members, went swimming and played water games in the community. As well as held many other morning game activities before DREAM Friday at Dartmouth

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: 

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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.

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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, Mona Abdelghani Program Empowerment Director The DREAM Program, Inc. Mobile: 774.281.3282 mona@dreamprogram.org