08 MAR 2011
Adventures in Madrid Part 2 - Dreaming Out Loud
Continuing with Givology's adventures in Madrid, this blog post is about another amazing organization we met through Ford Focus called Dreaming Out Loud.
The spirit behind Dreaming Out Loud was a long-time coming. Founder Christopher Bradshaw’s first foray into the world of social change came while in the third grade following a move to a new town. A few months after he arrived, a new playground was completed and children were presumably "free" to play. Except that tags had been banned without input from the children!
Feeling that this was an affront to all that made childhood valuable, he mounted a campaign to boycott the playground for his and his friends’ rights. Soon his class was making picket-signs and staging a sit-in at the sandbox. After an entire recess period besieging the playground for what they felt was right, the third grade activists were victorious. The adults reinstated tags with a few adjusted rules.
Twenty years later that same passion and spirit is still within Chris, but now he is applying it to empower and develop a generation of ethical thought-leaders in a time when bullying, corruption and a myriad other ethical issues plague society. His solution to these problems? Enter Dreaming Out Loud.
Chris founded Dreaming Out Loud in 2008, in response to the educational disparities in underserved urban communities. In particular, he hoped to advance a more ethical world that allows underserved children, youth and families to thrive in the global community. The entire idea is within the name of the organization. In Chris’s own words: “We envision a world in which individuals and communities are empowered to “dream out loud,” meaning they have the space to think, to imagine and to will their inner most dreams into vibrant reality. Our vision is captured by our motto ‘When Dreams Emerge, Communities Arise!’”
One of the most inspiring stories we heard at Madrid was about Dreaming Out Loud’s 12-week program at the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy during the spring semester of 2010. The students kept journals, made video projects about their vision on high school graduation day and helped make sandwiches for the homeless as a vehicle to make great strides toward self-discovery and personal growth. The results of this initiative are amazing – detentions decreased by 30% while student suspensions decreased by 27% over the program period.
In light of this recent success, Dreaming Out Loud is planning to begin a new program with Spingarn Senior High School in D.C., again working with 10 of the school's most academically and behaviorally challenged students. They are also looking forward to expanding Dreaming Out Loud’s amazing social enterprise called Aya Community Markets, a farmers’ market that employs local residents who will gain access to wrap-around services, professional development and training which are paid for by the profits of the business.
Check out more about Dreaming Out Loud and Chris at their website www.dreamingoutloud.org and twitter @DOLDC.