Special Feature: Still Dreaming that Dream

Eleven years of bringing smiles to children’s faces, eleven years of making children believe in themselves, eleven years of volunteering, eleven years of paving the path for hundreds of brighter futures,  eleven terrific years of Dream A Dream!! Eleven years ago my life stumbled upon a serendipitous time. I woke up one weekend morning expecting to spend the day like any other weekend in Bangalore – hanging with friends, riding my motorcycle and losing my way somewhere between Koramangala and Frazer town, finding new excuses to not find a gym, and maybe grabbing some prawn curry and beer at Pecos.  But life had other plans that day. I ended up spending the evening with a bunch of fascinating people discussing how we can help children from less fortunate backgrounds by giving them the opportunities and confidence to take on the real world. And so Dream A Dream was born.

We started by volunteering our time at the Freedom Foundation, a home for HIV infected children, with a simple goal of making the lives of the children there joyful, bringing smiles to their lives and giving them something to look forward to. And while confidence and hope grew in the hearts of these children, we realized we could make a real difference in children’s lives.

One child at a time.

And now eleven years later, watching from afar, it is humbling and inspiring to see how much Dream A Dream has achieved and how many lives have changed for the better as a result. At this juncture as we celebrate Dream A Dream’s eleventh anniversary I am grateful to the eleven other co-founders – Brinda Jacob-Janvrin, Neha Arya, Pramod Ramprasad, Rahul Mathur, Rashmi Bajaj, Sandeep Wadhwa, Shweta Kothari, Supreeta Sampath, Vipul Chhabria, Vishal Talreja and Vishwa Prasad – for allowing me to be a part of something this wonderful (despite the poor humor that I regularly injected into our initial long team meetings). I am especially grateful to Vishal, who over the years has become Vish Bhai to me. His decision to give up his fast rising corporate career and become a full-time Dreamer was a turning point for the organization; and his leadership has been the guiding light for the organization as it crossed the stupendous milestone of supporting over two thousand children with over one thousand active volunteers last year. But most of all I offer my sincerest thanks to the entire family of Dream A Dream volunteers – your time and energy has made these awe-inspiring eleven years of making dreams into reality possible. I am now even more excited to see what the next eleven will bring!! Arjun Dugal Admirer / Supporter / Co-founder.