Director's Cut: Transforming within, To Transform the World outside

The arrival of a new year is always a good time to reflect on the year gone by.

The arrival of a new year is always a good time to reflect on the year gone by. The question I begin to ask myself this year is “What have I realized about myself in relation to myself, my work at Dream A Dream and the world around me and how has that helped me transform within so I can be a more impactful changemaker outside?” The year has been a roller-coaster - working on plans for exponential growth, balanced delicately with going deeper into our understanding of child development, community understanding and life skills itself. Coupled with working overtime on building efficiencies in our delivery model, investing in curriculum development and continuing to build a world-class team; it has been a fascinating and fulfilling journey. The most rewarding aspect of the journey has been that we have realized what is still missing in our work. One of my biggest realizations this year has been -  that until and unless we become the change we wish to see in our children, and society at large, we will not be creating sustainable change. We have to first live the values we want children at Dream A Dream to learn – that of trust, respect, confidence and empathy. We need to go deeper than just intellectualizing our Life Skills development work with children.

We know Life Skills are important and we have a great program to develop them in our children. But at a very personal level, do we believe Life Skills is core to helping us become empowered? Maybe not yet, because we don’t yet live these values ourselves in our daily lives. Each of us is a reflection of the society around us. If we need to change society, we have to first start by changing ourselves, then our organization and that will create the ripple effect to change society. We need to begin by placing our trust in ourselves, then in each other, then in our teams, in the children, volunteers, supporters, the partner organizations and the parents. Our state of being should be a reflection of what we wish to see in the world around us. Dream A Dream’s vision is “To create a non-discriminatory society where unique differences in each individual are acknowledged and appreciated.” Each of us at Dream A Dream has now begun to internalize this vision and use the energy of that personal transformation to empower children and the communities that we work with. It has been our “WOW” moment this year and as we look at the coming year with the fresh eyes of a new born who has just discovered the beauty of this world, we are very excited to embark on this journey of exploration and discovery ‘within’ before we go out and change the world outside. Here’s wishing all of you a new year filled with transformations within, to create transformations in the world outside. Happy New Year! Vishal Talreja Co-founder & Executive Director Dream A Dream.