I Have A Dream Charitable Trust

After 21 years of experience in NZ – and 41 years in the US – we know that I Have a Dream works well in practice. 

 The good news is that it also works well in theory. 

 Over the past 9 years of these newsletters, we have often included academic reports and sector whitepapers that lend credence to our programme design.  We're especially pleased to include two NZ-produced reports today:

1. Emily Mason was the co-founder, along with Sir Bill English, of ImpactLab.  The explanation of her Mason Curve illustrates a profound truth of the Govt's social sector services, i.e., they are designed to be mass-delivered to the "average" citizen.  Standardisation helps to lower delivery costs and ensure consistency of services … but, of course, there is no such person as the "average" citizen.
2. The Social Investment in Action report from Deloitte is yet another excellent analysis of the situation, part of a series of helpful reports produced by Deloitte Partner, Adithi Pandit, and her team.

These reports call out some of the key design principles underlying the I Have a Dream programme, e.g.,

• A robust pathway from prototypes to pilots to scaled change.
• A decade of social investment approaches, locally and globally, provide evidence on what works and insight into what is possible across population cohorts.
• A single point of accountability and investment budget is required.  The public sector is set up to deliver efficiently, effectively and separately.
• Specific and localised service provision effectively provides integrated responses for those with highly complex needs.
• Cross-sector collaboration needs to have a stronger mandate for action and push into delivery for wider populations – not just the most challenging to serve.
• People underserved by each agency represent an "under the radar risk" with increased likelihood of escalating into at-risk.
• Our current systems of support – which are often issue-based – are not effective for people experiencing multiple barriers.
• Evidence supports a small set of core interventions that – delivered in a coordinated and sustained way – stabilise and improve the outcomes of those with multiple and complex issues.
• There are key characteristics – grounded in evidence – of successful social investment programmes, in order to successfully deliver social and economic benefit for underserved populations.

As we seek to expand the reach of the I Have a Dream programme, and especially to engage with iwi and Government, it's important that we continually assess and evolve our model to take account of new thinking in the sector as well as our on-the-ground experience.

Nga mihi, 

Scott Gilmour

Chairperson, Board of Trustees

I Have A Dream Charitable Trust

Volunteering

 We have had another very busy term with our I Have a Dream Volunteer crew! We have a big group of volunteers in our whanau contributing in so many ways across programmes. We are hugely grateful and could not do what we do without them all.

 This term was special as National Volunteer Week was held during June. Kirsty and the team managed to deliver special hand made gifts to every single one of our Volunteers and it was so lovely to connect and hear that everyone is enjoying and getting a lot out of the volunteering experience. We want to make sure that all our Volunteers have opportunities to grow, learn, be extended and rewarded through their volunteering experiences.

 We were overjoyed to take some of our team along to the National Volunteer Awards hosted by Volunteering Northland. We would like to especially mention and congratulate Te Wairere Tepania for receiving an individual long service award. Te Wairere has volunteered across events, holiday and after school programmes for I Have a Dream for several years. Huge congratulations also to our team of Volunteers from Pompallier Catholic College who received a group certificate. Some photos from our special evening are below.

Togetherness

In late June our Year 2 Navigators held a Dreamer and Whanau Event based around the theme of Matariki. They held the event as a way of bringing these junior Dreamers deeper into the IHAD kaupapa as we don't provide after school programs for this year group. It was a great way for showcasing our IHAD values of whanaungatanga (relationships), aroha (love) and tumunako (hope). It was also a great new way of engaging and connecting with whanau. 20 Dreamers and their whanau attended. The evening kicked off with a meet and greet and family photos. They then had some matariki themed activities, kapahaka performance, shared kai and a rongoa workshop to finish off. It was a beautiful event of kotahitanga (togetherness) which resulted in pure happiness on the faces of the Dreamers.