We aim to demonstrate how the long-term, holistic and strength-based investment in a generation of local children will have a positive collective impact on the community, focusing on the Northland region of New Zealand initially and then, ultimately, New Zealand as whole.  IHAD empowers tamariki (children) and rangatahi (youth) (our Dreamers) to navigate their own path out of intergenerational challenges and achieve their dreams, along with academic and life success.

I Have a Dream is a deeply localised kaupapa (programme) based predominantly in Northland. We are a wellbeing organisation built on high trust relationships. We are also a Learning Organisation, taking a constant “test, learn, adapt” approach. In the communities that we serve, we think of ourselves as being like water flowing into a space. We ask ourselves “Where are the spaces in this community that we should flow into to have the greatest possible positive impact?”

The I Have a Dream programme in Aotearoa is anchored in the original United States-based I Have a Dream Foundation movement using an evidence-based whole child approach. That movement is now in its 42 nd year in the United States. I Have a Dream began in Aotearoa in 2003 with a pilot group of 53 children – the entire Year 4 cohort – at the Decile 1A Wesley Primary School in Mt Roskill, Auckland. This pilot project proved that the I Have a Dream philosophy and approach could be successfully used in Aotearoa to affect positive generational change.

In 2016, after the completion of the pilot, we expanded to four Dream Partner schools in the Tikipunga and Otangarei communities of Whangārei. Now in our 8th year in these communities, we have worked with over 2,000 Dreamers and their whānau in these communities to date. In January 2023 we also started a new programme, employing a Navigator based in Te Kura o Hau Karetu (Primary School) in Upper Hutt.

A core long-term goal of I Have a Dream in Aotearoa has always been to help shape social and educational policy by demonstrating the efficacy of our model. Twenty years in we are more committed than ever to continuing to do just that and, by doing so, underpin a more widespread adoption of it.