Connecting with Community: DREAM

Directing through Research, 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.

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.