Inside this issue

Amuse Bouche - A Note from the Prez 2 Announcements and Updates 2 Shout Outs! 3 Thanks, Alumni! - Report from Maine 3 Surfing in the Inner City 4-5 Introducing the Office Staff 5-7 AmeriCorps at Risk 7 DREAM Doppelgangers 8 Buy Your DREAM Shades! 9

The Blue Wagon March 2011

Willowbrook celebrates partner pairs with beautiful portraits

I’m thrilled to announce the “launch” of the Alumni Volunteer Pool, which is comprised of DREAM Alumni who have expressed interest in lending a hand to the Alumni Council and the Central Office for various projects and events. Whenever there’s an initiative we need extra help with – everything from upkeep at Camp to hosting regional Alumni reunions – I reach out to the entire Volunteer Pool, then people respond based on their availability and interest. I would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to the following individuals, all of whom stepped up to be part of the Alumni Volunteer Pool: Jon Hopper, Josh Warren, Steph Baer, Julia Risk, Lindsay Deane, Frieda Arenos (appointed to lead the Alumni Appeal), Ashley Mas, Brian Bensch (appointed to lead The Blue Wagon), Shannon Maguire, Chris Ellingwood (elected to be the new Constitution Keeper), Allie Williams, Susie Fox, Anne Fletcher, Rob Hoffman, Stephanie Gergely, Dustin Hunter (appointed to be the new Connection Initiative Head), Ian Greenhalgh, Michelle Kniffin, Meg Kerrigan (appointed to be the new Knowledge Initiative Head), Phil Ortego (the outgoing Knowledge Initiative Head), Brittany Beth, Jenny Luca, and Caity Patey. Several volunteers have already offered to help plan and organize the upcoming events to welcome graduating seniors to the Alumni Organization, and we have more volunteer opportunities in the pipe-line. We’ll keep adding to this list of DREAM rockstars, so if you are interesting in joining the Alumni Volunteer Pool, just send me an email. PS next month we’ll be formally introducing the newest members of the Alumni Council, all of whom start their new roles on April 1st! Keep DREAMing, AJ LeGaye President, 2010-2012 DREAM Alumni Council a.legaye@gmail.com

AMUSE BOUCHE By AJ LeGaye, Alumni Council President

1.I Messed Up! Last month I erroneously wrote that Birchwood DREAMer Nikki Heald was named Student of the Month. Turns out, she was named Student of the SEMESTER by her school! You rock! 2. Brian Bensch is Taking Over… the reins of The Blue Wagon. I have truly enjoyed laying out TBW for the past 10 months, but it’s Brian’s (Darmouth ‘09) turn to take a shot at it. He will do a great job and you won’t have to put up with my bad puns and photo captions any more (I may have included one last shameless picture of myself on page 7.) As always, you can reach Brian at bbensch@gmail.com to submit ideas, letters to the editor, insults, jokes, and general feedback. With Brian putting together TBW, I will be able to focus on my duties as Community Initiative Head on the DREAM Alumni Council for the next year and help everyone stay connected to DREAM and each other. If you have an announcement (achievements, weddings, babies, acceptances, etc.) that you would like to appear in The Blue Wagon, just send it to constitutionkeeper@gmail.com. Thanks!

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND UPDATES

AMUSE BOUCHE By AJ LeGaye, Alumni Council President

Rough times for Windsor Culminating

SHOUT OUTS! By Neil Groberg, DREAM Board of Directors

Recently Mike Loner received an email from a Board Member worth sharing... Please distribute to the DREAM community, the Board and Champlain DREAM as appropriate. Being literally next door to the Champlain campus I frequently pop into some of its events. Last night it had its third annual "Elevator Pitch Competition", which I attended. It is sponsored by Key Bank, which provides some serious cash awards. There are three separate competitions: one for Entrepreneurs, one for Job/Internship Seekers and one for Nonprofit/Social Advocates. In the latter category Monique Prevost's pitch was about DREAM and her desire to open a Bates Chapter in the future. She won second prize and $300 and did DREAM proud! The judges included many VIPs of the Burlington business and non-profit community, including Hal Colston and Gretchen Morse, the retiring Executive Director of the United Way of Chittenden County, who added her own unsolicited praise for DREAM. Way to go Monique and DREAM! Neil

THANK YOU, ALUMNI!

By Emily Mulloy, BU ‘13

BU DREAM recently took a Culminating trip to Maine, partially paid for by a grant from the Alumni Organization. Emily Mulloy submitted this thank you note: Our Culminating Trip to Maine was incredible! The adventure started early in the morning, with an Am-trak train trip bound for Wells, Maine. There, Maine DREAM alumni and friends transported us all to the fire house in Kennebunk, Maine, for a day-and-a-half of sledding, outside games, a trip to the beach, friendship bracelet-making, a movie, board games, and rides in the fire trucks! Though there was defi-nitely down-time during the trip, there was never a dull moment and everyone kept themselves busy! Perhaps the most rewarding part of the trip was to see how excited the kids were to be in a new environ-ment. Many of them had never ridden a real train before, or had the chance to ride in a fire truck. The kids handled the trip so well and it was exciting to be able to get everyone together experiencing so many cool and relaxed activities. In total, 33 DREAMers from the BU DREAM Program partici-pated. Thank you for your support in making our first Culminating Trip a success! DREAM BIG! Photos of the trip: http://dreamprogram.smugmug.com/Boston-Programs/OrchardGardens/Trip-to-Maine-2011-Part-

II/15953930_R2rAg#1196717013_HYeU3 http://dreamprogram.smugmug.com/Boston-Programs/OrchardGardens/Trip-to-Maine-

2011/15948980_ywyus#1196323433_xudEr

Rockin’ in Kennebunkport

SURFING IN THE INNER CITY By Patrick DeLeon, former DREAM Board of Directors

There’s an image that’s been floating around in my head a lot recently. I remember a couple summers ago watching 15 DREAM mentees gathered around that long, flat rock just off the garden up at Camp. One or two at a time, each mentee jumped up on the rock in bathing suits and pretended to surf while everyone else sang (often quite bad) surf music. Sometimes someone would throw a bucket or two of water and the mentees would shriek. Someone else snapped a picture in front of a backdrop of a waving blue tarp. And everyone, every time someone new jumped up there, would laugh, a real, genu-ine laugh.

Now, I know what I saw wasn’t that remarkable. I’m pretty sure that moment has happened dozens of times, and that similar things happened with those same mentees several more times that day. And that’s exactly why that moment sticks in my head – because DREAM has that ability to take anything, even a rock in the middle of the woods 6,000 miles from Pipeline, and turn it into some-thing spectacular with the combination of imagination, people who are up for anything, and a group of youth who trust the staff and mentors. My name is Patrick DeLeon, and I’m not a true DREAM alum. I was a Board member for two and a half years, a counseling trainer for staff and mentors, and a guy who spent way too much time tagging along with Trail Crew up at Camp, partly because they let me play with chain-saws. But I saw enough to recognize that DREAM has something unique that thousands of youth programs across the country would desperately love to have. I al-ways clung to the Contagious Energy Core Value – for me that encapsulated a lot of what I love about DREAM – but I know there are many other ways to talk about that uniqueness. For a tiny example, I’ve done my basic

counseling skills training with many agencies and groups. When I’d talk to DREAM staff or mentors, they just inherently got it, much faster than many seasoned professionals; they automatically understood the respect and the genuine connection and the interest in and affection for the kids we work with that lies at the heart of how I believe we need to work with youth. And it’s that spirit, which is rarer in the youth service world than I wish it was, that I want to ask you to bring back. I work for Offender Aid and Restoration in Washington D.C., and we have a program that works with court-affiliated youth. We connect our clients to community service options around the city, and we of-fer many community service projects ourselves. We provide them with a case manager with whom they work closely, we teach a social skills/impulse control class, and we’ll be doing a community conferenc-ing model that sets up mediation between our youth and the victim of their crime to give the client a chance to really understand the impact of their crime. We come up with a plan to really give our youth the chance to repay the damage they’ve done. And, of course, we have a new mentoring program that pairs local community volunteers with our youth to spend at least eight hours per month, working together one-on-one in the community as well as doing group events and service projects with us.

This does not count as surfing

INNER-CITY SURFING, CONT. If any of the Alumni reading this are in the DC area, or know anyone who would make a great mentor in the DC area, we would love to tell you more about our mentoring program and hopefully get you on board. Please be in touch at pdeleon@oaronline.org or (202) 545-7923 x. 14. But this is not just an info-mercial for our program – in every city, and in many rural communities, there are mentoring programs

that would love the skills, energy, and approach that you developed in DREAM. There are also so many programs that would love to have a former men-tee as a mentor, someone who could take what was effective and positive in his or her own life and use that experience to be a genuine support in someone else’s life. I know Josh Warren in the Boston Office has some resources about other pro-grams that would love and could really use your help,

and the Alumni Organization can help connect you to DREAM’s Local Programs. The Alumni Organization works constantly to maintain alumni connections to DREAM in so many ways, and I believe strongly in the importance of that connection – staying connected to your former mentee/mentor, to current mentors, to the Alumni Organization, to the agency overall. But I also think for so many of the DREAM folks I have come in contact with – mentees, mentors, staff, Board mem-bers, and others – that DREAM helped to build on their inherent skills and personalities and helped to inspire a positive spirit, an enthusiasm, and a love that so many youth around the country could benefit from. Very simply, I’d ask you to show another kid how to turn a rock into a surfboard.

Looking for volunteers!

INTRODUCING THE OFFICE A rundown (fundown!) of “Who We Are” by DREAM’s Central and Boston Offices

DREAM's Central Office initiates and supports DREAM programs throughout Vermont and New Eng-land. The Central Office also supports the Local Programs in a variety of ways that include providing liability insurance, screening and training new mentors, facilitating summer programming, forming strategic partnerships with other organizations, and making various resources available for parents, children, and mentors. Program Empowerment Directors work directly with the Local Programs. The Central Office is also home to the Camp staff who oversee the Camp property in Fletcher and the pro-grams offered throughout the year to children and mentors. Recently some Alumni have asked us to in-troduce ourselves. You can always find out about DREAM and our staff on our website, but here is a rundown for those interested in our current DREAM Team! Mike Loner, Executive Director: Mike has been with DREAM since March of 2005 and has a varied background. Prior to joining DREAM, Mike was an Environmental Technician at a major pharmaceuti-cal company, a Project Manager for a municipal solid waste district in Vermont, and has been a board member for several nonprofits and a former Planning Commissioner in St. Albans. He and his wife Vicki live with their four year old daughter Alexandria and their 17 year old dog Cody in Hinesburg, Vermont.

MORE STAFF! Elizabeth Haag, Associate Executive Director: Elizabeth Haag is a 2007 graduate of the University of Vermont (UVM), with a focus in Sociology and Rec-reation Management. She came to Vermont on a whim, looking to escape the flatland of Indiana, and fell in love. After many years of admiring The DREAM Program, she joined the organization as an AmeriCorps Programs Director specializing in teens. In the Fall of 2008, Elizabeth transitioned from Pro-grams Director to Associate Executive Director for DREAM. She has since challenged herself with pro-jects focusing on DREAM’s Theories of Change for children and mentors, supporting Central Office staff, staff development, and hiring for the organization. Ashleigh Ellsworth-Keller, Camp DREAM Direc-tor: Ashleigh comes to the position of Camp DREAM Director from a love of the outdoors, kids, and environ-mental and social justice. She is a Southern expatriate who spent the past five years living in Arizona before moving to Vermont for DREAM. One of her favorite things about camp is its ability to bring out aspects of one's personality that may have been suppressed in the "real world." Ashleigh and her husband David live in Burlington, where they enjoy seeing both the water and the Adirondacks. Chad Butt, Programs Director: Chad is a 2004 graduate of Dartmouth College, where he majored in Earth Science and got his secondary teacher certification credential. He was a mentor in The DREAM Program for his four years at Dartmouth. In August 2004 he joined the DREAM Central Office in Vermont as an Ameri-Corps VISTA in the position of Program Liaison. Chad was hired on and worked as the Programs Director from August 2005 through August 2009. In August 2009 Chad took on the role of Boston Programs Director and moved to Boston, MA to start up DREAM’s first out of Vermont expansion. Josh Warren, Resource Development Director: Josh Warren was first introduced to The DREAM Program in the fall of 2004, when he was a freshman at Champlain College. As a founding mentor of the Champlain DREAM program, Josh had the privilege to work with some of the most amazing children, families, and col-lege students in the state of Vermont, and it was the relationships that he made that solidified his love for DREAM and mentoring. Josh joined the DREAM office staff as a Program Empowerment Director to help DREAM open a satellite office and further develop programming in southern Vermont. In the fall of 2009 Josh moved with DREAM to Boston to open DREAM’s first regional office in Roxbury, MA. Michael Ewan, Programs Director: Mike spent most of his life in the Carolinas, both North and South. In his spare time Mike enjoys skiing, hiking, playing all team sports, being outdoors, ACC football and basket-ball (especially Clemson), teams from Philadelphia, cheering on his ASU Mountaineers to another national football championship and experiencing new things. Mike is also excited about helping children of all ages and abilities to become more independent and to become the best they can be. Paul Espina, Program Empowerment Director: Paul graduated from Dartmouth in 2007 with a degree in Sociology and Elementary Education training. He was a mentor in the Windsor DREAM program and volun-teered during summer camp for four years. After graduating he taught English and science at Ejit Elementary School in the Marshall Islands for 2 years. DREAM’s siren call brought him back to Vermont.

AMERICORPS AT RISK By Mike Loner, DREAM Executive Director

As many of you know, the DREAM Program is an AmeriCorps program. Each year, DREAM is fortunate to have AmeriCorps members serving at DREAM. In fact, 6 out of the 13 awesome individuals who make up the full-time Central Office crew in Vermont and Boston are AmeriCorps members. Each summer we also play host to 20 or so AmeriCorps members who serve as Camp Counselors, Community Interns, and Camp DREAM trail workers. Without these incredible individuals DREAM would find it difficult to support Local Programs and near impossible to provide summer programming and Camp programming.

On February 19, 2011 the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, legislation containing the largest spending cuts in history. The House Bill proposes the complete defunding of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which would eliminate AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve, and Senior Corps, programs that make up the backbone of volunteerism in the country. The Bill would also eliminate or drastically cut many of the programs that make up the support our nation offers to children in poverty. Included are Head Start, Childcare Development Block Grants, Mentoring for Children of Prisoners, Pell Grants for college tui-tion, and drastic reductions to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) budget. The Central Office, Board, & Alumni Council are preparing letters to the state and federal governments ex-pressing our concerns about these cuts as they relate to DREAM and low-income communities across the na-tion. We have the responsibility as an organization to support AmeriCorps and to speak on behalf of the fami-lies to whom we devote so much of our time, energy, and resources. Please look for further communication from me regarding these letters in the near future, and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts in the meantime. You can reach Mike at mloner@dreamprogram.org.

MORE AWESOME OFFICE STAFF Rachel Kauppila, Program Empowerment Director: Rachel spent the past year teaching English in Brive la Gaillarde, France where she consumed an exorbitant amount of bread, cheese, wine and chocolate, wan-dered the streets of little stone villages, and improved her French considerably. When she’s not DREAMing in technicolor she can be found running through the hills, baking chocolate treats, volunteering and reading. Rosetta Morse, Program Empowerment Director: Rosetta, known as Zetty, first laid eyes on the DREAM T-shirt during her time at UVM, where she received a degree in Geography and Community/International Development in 2007. Growing up in Guilford, VT, she learned early to love the outdoors, which led her to Merrowvista – a summer camp in central New Hampshire. Zetty is continually inspired by DREAM’s innovative mission and enthusiasm for positive change. Andrew Lassiter, Camp and Land Manager: Andrew is a native of Sandwich, MA. He was introduced to DREAM working on the Camp DREAM Trail Crew in the summer of 2009. Enthralled with Camp, and unable to imagine leaving his new home in Burlington, Andrew joined DREAM once again as the Land and Resource Manager after graduating from UVM in May of 2010. He is thrilled about working for DREAM and plans to make Camp DREAM a place where dreams really do come true! Sarah Caliendo (Program Empowerment Director), Alexander "Sandy" Mervak (Development Direc-tor) and Jenna Rae Helenski (Teen Resource Coordinator) are also on staff, but unfortunately we lack bios for them. We assure you that they’re great.

Not staff...

NEW & IMPORTANT, NO-EXPLANATION-NECESSARY TBW SECTION

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