I have always admired men and women who used their talents to serve the community, and who were highly respected and admired for their efforts and sacrifices, even though they held no office whatsoever in government or society.
- Nelson Mandela
Activist, political leader and philanthropist
Community Programs
The Problem
Cabarete is home to approximately 25,000 residents. Eighty percent of those residents are food insecure and unable to respond to economic or medical emergencies. Nearly one in every four children under the age of five in the Dominican Republic was not registered at birth.
Our Solution
DREAM believes in holistic community development that begins with access to high-quality education, from early childhood to primary school and beyond. We realize that education is just one piece of the puzzle to end extreme poverty in the Dominican Republic. Through our community programs, we provide additional services including birth registrations and documentation, summer enrichment and crisis response.
Our Programs
Luceros
Luceros is a Human Rights and Documentation Program with dual objectives:
• Decreasing the number of undocumented community members in the Dominican Republic.
• Advocating for the universal human right to name and identify to be respected.
Luceros creates a civil network of advocates trained to work with the legal system and resolve cases for children and youth lacking proper documentation, including their birth certificate or identity card, and for those whose documents have been invalidated by the government. Since 2017, DREAM has partnered with the Open Society Foundation to deepen the work of the Luceros Documentation program. We are currently training and assisting every school district in the Puerto Plata province and NGOs throughout the country.
Awards: Óscar Arnulfo Romero Ibero-American Award for Human Rights Education
Luceros has a significantly higher case resolution rate compared to similar programs.
Psychology Department
DREAM's Psychology Department aims to provide quality psychological care to beneficiaries and collaborators of each DREAM program, from psychological evaluation and guidance to psychoeducation through workshops and audiovisual content.
The Psychology Department is focused on three main areas:
Evaluation and Referral: Supporting children and youth who require multidisciplinary evaluations and treatments, as well as follow-up on psychoemotional situations within DREAM’s educational spaces. If needed, cases will be referred to multidisciplinary specialists for further evaluations and specific treatments.
Psychological Orientation: DREAM Project's beneficiaries, such as program participants and employees, as well as their families, can receive psychological orientation sessions, and our specialists will follow up on each case.
Training and Development: Psychoeducational workshops for DREAM Project employees will be offered throughout the year, and audiovisual material will be shared with the wider public through the different DREAM social media channels.
Summer Camps
DREAM’s intensive summer camps improve educational retention for the most at-risk students, reinforcing educational attainment over the summer months.
Camps are half-day and run four weeks. Teachers from local public schools co-facilitate lessons with experienced staff from abroad, further developing their instructional and classroom management skills. Critical-thinking and life skills are also developed through experiential learning activities. Student academic achievement is further enhanced through extracurricular opportunities like arts, sports, field trips and music at DREAM’s Bachata Academy.
#DREAMenCASA
The DREAM Project has served as a critical community leader since we were founded in the year 2002. Through natural disasters, economic hardships and countless moments of need, we have been there for our 27 partner communities.
In this spirit, DREAM is proud to provide food, educational materials and online resources to thousands of children, youth and community members while they remain safely at home, through #DREAMenCASA.
Make a donation.
Your generous donation makes our programs possible and impacts the lives of more than 8,000 children who need it the most.