I Have a Dream is empowering NZ’s future.
We are creating generational change by empowering youth to achieve academic & life success.
It started with four powerful words: “I have a dream.” Since 2003, I Have a Dream has put those words into action here in New Zealand, exemplifying Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s dream of equality. We are empowering Kiwi kids – Dreamers – to navigate their own path out of material hardship and into academic and life success.
Based on the work of the I Have a Dream Foundation, which was started in the US in 1981 and has served 18,000 youth in over 200 programmes, our evidence-based, whole-child approach focuses on providing kids with access to the resources they need to succeed, along with consistent, caring adults – Navigators – to guide and support them.
I Have a Dream began in New Zealand in 2003 with a group of 53 children – the entire Year 4 cohort – at the Decile 1A Wesley Primary School in Mt Roskill, Auckland. By picking up this US model and adapting it to the New Zealand context, it was a stunning success. In 2012, 38% of these Dreamers achieved University Entrance, compared to 7% of their non-Dreamer peers, and 80% of Dreamers entered tertiary study, compared to 30% of their non-Dreamer peers. This pilot project proved that investing in the education of an entire generation has a dramatic and lasting impact on inter-generational poverty.
In 2016, we expanded to four Dream Partner schools in the Tikipunga and Otangarei communities of Whangārei, and by 2025, I Have a Dream will work with over 1,000 Kiwi kids. We know that significant social change is possible. Our long-term intention is to shape educational and social policy and to provide positive, effective interventions for Kiwi kids nationwide.
#inspiringdreamsenablingfutures #ihaveadreamnz
You can help I Have A Dream create successful
futures for Kiwi kids.
