On Friday July 3rd, we met a young Ashoka Fellow named Vishal Talreja and the program officer of Dream a Dream, Kalpana Purushothaman. Dream a Dream provides life skills programming for vulnerable children.
An effortless meeting ensued between us in the afternoon. We discussed the Global SE program and its proposed structure. They gave a sense of how they have integrated volunteers from abroad into their programming. They seem to have quite a bit of experience hosting foreign volunteers. For example, they shared with us their experience with Gap-Guru and other skilled volunteers that they have worked with.
After our meeting at their new offices in Jaya Nagar (a leafy residential area of southern Bangalore), we visited one of their programs, a football activity, in a state supported orphanage.
Dream a Dream leverages its volunteer list of corporate professionals and elite sports clubs in the city to provide this and other life-skill development programs for public institutions. According to Dream a Dream, they have over a 1000 volunteers and impact over 1500 children per year through regular programming. A pretty good volunteer-client ratio, if you asked me.
I only had a vague notion of what “life skills” meant before I came across Dream a Dream’s work. Life skills include things such as problem solving, critical thinking, self-awareness raising skills, coping with stress, interpersonal skills, and team building. Such life skills are important for success, but often receive little attention in the Indian education system (Dream a Dream [Online]). As an aside, I would add that many Western education systems often cut this form of education first.
There is a remarkable similarity between the outputs that a liberal arts education claims to enable (the first three) and the skills that Vishal’s group is promoting in underprivileged children. As we continue to come back to Bangalore, I hope we can together question how one assesses the value of life skills education. Given our work at Wooster in this area, I think this will be a fruitful discussion.
Capability! No, competency. Capacity?
That was such a confusing meeting. Probably one of the low points of our internship 😛
When I was doing research about Dream a Dream, I was particularly struck by Vishal’s background — he used to be an investment banker and a venture capitalist before he started doing Dream a Dream full-time. We saw similar patterns again and again within the organizations we met — talented people who left lucrative careers in the private sector to work in the social sector. If I am not mistaken, the MSDS trust actually has an award that recognizes individuals who choose this route! So awesome 🙂
Definitely! This draws a parallel between what we, Wooster students are learning and what Dream a Dream’s clientele is receiving. We could definitely use this as our core capacity/competency, whatever it is??, to foster greater ties with the organization. I was just browsing through their website-it looks brilliant!