Youth Dreams

Youth Dreamers Summer Art Program Final Report
By: Keyani Kenny & Dominique Davis

This summer, The Youth Dreamers had a summer program called “Say It Loud, Say It Proud.” This program took place on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10am-3pm. This program was located at 1430 Carswell Street also known as The Dream House. There were 13 students total that varied from 6th to 10th grade.
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The Youth Dreamers received funding from many generous people this year. Baltimore Housing’s Office of Community Services provided free lunch for the kids and the teenagers who worked with us this summer. YouthWorks provided the youth stipends so that the youth would not be working for nothing this summer. The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Youth As Resources  supported our program. Last but not least, we received donations from our participants. We had a lot of support this year and they are all greatly appreciated.

The Youth Dreamers had four teenage employees this year. Those four lovely ladies were: Keyani Kenny a senior at City High School, Aniya Hodges a freshman at Delaware State University, Miriam Harris a freshman at Temple University and last but not least Dominique Davis a freshman at Frostburg University.

Projects and Schedule
From 10 am till 12pm these four young ladies played the teaching role during which they taught participants how to write speeches and use proper English when speaking. We did this by having different lessons everyday. Those lessons consisted of impromptu, poetry and prose, this I believe, how to/demo speech, etc. At the end of the program the participants had written and performed a series of different speeches.

One special project that we indulged in was our mural project. One day we handed out information about two different programs that make community murals-one in Philadelphia and one in California. We had the campers split into groups and they had to read and learn where these programs were located and how they operate and things of that nature. After we did this activity we split into new groups and designed and painted our own murals onto big wooden boards. The murals had to follow one of these requirements:   tell a story, express a message/theme/idea, represent community, or express a shared identity.  After we were done with all the creating and completely finished our murals we installed them on boarded vacant houses located on Tivoly Street with the help of fabulous city employees.

From 12pm to 1pm was lunch hour. Keyani was the lunch lady but also Miriam, Aniya, and Dominique all helped out when Keyani needed it. We all worked as a team. In the morning our handsome lunch delivery man (Estavon) happily delivered lunch. Come 12 o’clock the lunch was all ready for the campers. Sometimes the kids didn’t really take to the lunch so we, being great camp counselors, and Ms. K, a great director, provided alternate lunch on some days. While eating we would indulge in conversation, playing games and having a good time. By 1pm we would clean up from lunch, take out trash and send the kids off to art with the MICA art students and our fabulous high school intern.

At I o’clock it was time for the kids to go up and join the MICA summer artists Rutunda and Denise and the high school intern Samantha where they engaged them from 1 to 3 in Community Art.  They taught the value and pride that comes from being able to beautify the community to make change and positively engage in community actions. The kids did Me collages, made clay and soft sculptures,  and made signs for the neighbors on pieces of roofing slate.  This year at Artscape the kids taught the community members there how to make fans in order to beat the heat and surprisingly enough it was not as hot as anticipated during Artscape  which wasn’t the usual. The kids also did some advertising in order to get more votes for the Youth Dreamers competing in the Liberty Mutual Like My Community Project for $30,000. At the end of the workshop the kids and their counselors  walked around together and took in the sights and enjoyed the largest free art festival in the country together.

To keep the kids cool and happy throughout the summer, seeing as Baltimore can have some EXTREMELY hot summer days to which there is sometimes no relief, every Friday we would treat the kids to Ice Cream Fridays and allow them to have ice cream at the end of the days on Fridays. The kids loved it and had something to look forward to at the end of the day! Artscape was a blast!  The kids enjoyed being exposed to different types of artists and activities, such as contests, hands-on art projects and awesome carnival food. Also during the summer we had a trip to  Calleva donated to us where we went to a ropes course together, learned team building skills, and developed ways to work together and be able to depend and rely on each other for support. Some of the parts of the ropes course were extremely scary and not your average everyday activities for the youth of Baltimore.

Evaluation
The attendance fluctuated, we had 13 total coming, 7 had perfect attendance, 2 missed only one day, and 4 missed more than one day. Some of the participants had summer vacations and trips planned so they came the days that they weren’t on vacation and participated when they came back, which was nice because that meant that they really liked the program and wanted to come even after a long and tiring vacation that they may have had. Generally everyone enjoyed both components of the summer program as shown through the survey we administered. The speech and the community art did fare well and everyone enjoyed some part of the program.  Of those surveyed at the end, 8 said the program was “the best thing ever,” 3 said it was “fun,” and 1 thought it was “eh, alright.”  All of the students surveyed said they would recommend this program to someone else next year.  A  little over 50% of the youth expressed interest in coming back to join the program again and the other 50% said “maybe.”   Most of the kids preferred to be taught by a combination of adults and peers.  

The murals received an average 9.17 out of 10 and the Calleva ropes trip received an average of 8.19 out of 10.  The kids liked that the Community Arts Program taught them how to connect to one another and look at their community differently. The kids also liked that the Community Art part helped to make the community look better as well as how it shows people that the youth care about the community and the way it looks and how it gives the community a more positive feeling to it. Just as exciting as that, they all really loved being in the Dream House for the second time for the summer program and it was exciting to have their own space.
We, as the counselors and the people who have implemented the program, feel that everything worked out in its own way and now that it’s the end of the summer there were some things that we should try to work on revising for the next summer. Upon reflection, we felt that the daily Facebook boards, Icebreakers and Daily Rap were successful and should continue next year.  The lunch hour was really nice for everyone, the mural project was amazing, Artcape was a blast, and we definitely want to try to get back to the ropes course.  We will change the theme of the morning from speeches to something different.  We all had a lovely summer together and if nothing else, we enjoyed each other’s company and presence during the summer.  We hope to see a lot of familiar faces and just as many new faces next summer in the Youth Dreamers Summer Program.

Written by Dominique Davis

Civic Leadership is a program in which CTY John’s Hopkins students engage in community service programs throughout the states and learn the value of community and giving back to communities around the world. Every year we get young folks who come out to visit the Dream House and learn about what we do and how we do it and to do a fun service project with us.

This year, on July 12^th, high school students from all over the world and the country come to visit us and learn from four high school Youth Dreamers about what it means to be engaged in the community. We started off with fun introductions with name, place and a fun fact about where you live. We then sent them on to a scavenger hunt to learn more about our house and our history.

For the huge service project we had the youth create videos to advertise the Youth Dreamers and persuade people to vote for the Youth Dreamers in the Facebook Liberty Mutual Baltimore Like My Community Project for $30, 000. But first we warmed them up by having them get into teams of four and create infomercials about our after school programs so that the whole group could learn about all of our programs in a fun, creative way. We were really impressed with their work! Then we gave the same teams the challenge to create a video about the Liberty Mutual Baltimore Like My Community project. As all you YD fans know, we are in DIRE need of the money, and we are currently in 4^th place. You need to be in the top 3 spots to win. We are not that far behind and we just need one last little push. We were hoping that these creative videos might do just that!

After hearing this the youth were excited to be able to help get more votes, thus we all split into groups and each group got one high school Youth Dreamer to help them with their video. We recorded each video using the Flip Videos that we received through a grant. At the end we all piled up in the lounge and watched together and voted for which videos we liked best out of all four teams. At this point we realized that all the videos had some strong points and that if edited together properly then it would be an amazing and persuasive video.

Overall the day went well and the Youth Dreamers once again touched other youths’ lives with the spirit of the YD and showed what it means to be a part of a community, as well as how good it feels to do something good in a community especially when it’s not always your own. Over and out!

Homework Club takes place during the school year on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:00 to 5:00 at the Dream House. There is a pyramid effect here:

Everyone really works. The high school supervisors watch over the middle school students who are tutoring the elementary school students from 3:00-4:00.  Then the high school buddies help with middle school buddies’ homework from 4:00-5:00. We recruit our staff with posters, word of mouth and our website. Even though the Youth Dreamers is a place for youth we had to fill out applications, be interviewed by our peers and go through the process of waiting to hear if we had a job. This year, 45 middle and high school students were hired and 25 elementary school students were served. To recruit the elementary school members we attended Back to School Night at the beginning of the year and we asked teachers to circulate our flyers and registration.  At the beginning all youth staff have training sessions in which they learn about a typical day in Homework Club, how the “yikes!!!” page works, rules and expectations, how to mentor younger children, etc. We also had orientation “Meet and Greet” at the beginning of the program for the staff to meet the elementary school students.

Description by Pamela Jackson, 7th grade staff

A Typical day in Homework Club….The first thing that happens is the middle school buddies arrive at the Dream House and look for their elementary school buddies (who were picked up from school by select middle school staff).  Then everyone gets to work and goes to their rooms and starts on homework. Then around 3:30 p.m. if a buddy is done with homework they are now able to get on the computer or play an educational game with their buddy. At 3:45 it’s snack-time and they go and get a snack before they leave. Finally at 4:00 the little buddies leave and go home. After they leave the middle school buddies have a staff meeting where they reflect on the day, problem solve and have mini trainings. Around 4:30 the middle school students leave the meeting and start on their homework with help from local high school students.

When it’s around the holidays we have an event or party about that holiday to teach the buddies about that holiday in a fun way. When birthdays come around we celebrate them at the end of the month and they all receive a cupcake. Another special part of the program is the sticker chart.  Every day the buddies work hard to receive stickers for completing homework and having good behavior. Then at the end of the month the person with the most amount of stickers receives a prize. The most amount of stickers that can be earned in a day is 3 but if someone does something outstanding they are able to receive 4 stickers for that day.  Our final big event for the year is Funfest. This is a block party every year on Global Youth Service Day. This event is held to bring the community together so that everybody can have fun and enjoy time with each other.

Parents of elementary school buddies say this program helps their children achieve their goals and encourages them to try their best in school. This program impacts the members in the community in many ways but the main impact would have to be giving the community members a safe place to come and to get the youth off of the street and to get them to do homework and work hard in school. Employees are able to have a place to earn money and help another student younger than them with homework and projects. This impacts both schools by having a place for students to do their work which over time can help the schools get higher grades on standardized tests which can help boost ratings for the school.

Evaluation by Aaron Harding, 8th grade staff

This year, as it is every year, students have to sign in daily.  Out of 43 days of Homework Club the average student came 33 days. And we had 14 kids that came everyday throughout of the whole year. Only 7 kids dropped out of the program because of moving or family issues.  Only two dropped out because they didn’t want to come anymore.

Each day, both staff and buddies must do evaluations to show how well they did during the session. When we averaged out these evaluations at the end of the year, we found that the elementary students rated their middle school tutors a 4.9 out of 5 for how much they helped.   These outcomes are great and better than ever. The middle school staff tutors also have to evaluate the elementary school students on their performance throughout the day. The average rating of how well the elementary school buddy did was 4.9 out of 5. All of our standards are met and passed with these evaluations.

The end of the year evaluations show how much kids liked Homework Club and how much it helped them with their homework and their academic skills. Of the thirteen students surveyed, twelve kids said that Homework Club helped a lot with their homework. Eight kids said they enjoy Homework Club a lot and four stated some. All of the kids surveyed said Homework Club improved their grades greatly and that they would come back next year. The kids said they mostly enjoyed the scavenger hunts during testing, having help with homework, using the computers, art classes, and having fun.

Evaluations were also done for the middle school staff and how they felt about the whole year. Out of thirteen middle school staff surveyed, eight said they loved being a tutor, four said they liked it and one said it was OK. One student commented, “It was an amazing experience!” Another middle school staff comment was, “Homework Club is lots of fun!”  The majority of the staff surveyed thought that the trainings were helpful.  All staff also felt that their growth in the following categories was excellent or very good:  listening, negotiating, creativity, responsibility, professionalism, getting along well with others, and teaching.  All but two staff members earned a score of 82% or above on all of their monthly evaluations.  All but four shared that they would participate next year.  Some middle school staff said that the best part of Homework Club was teaching their buddy new things they never knew.

Reflections by Lawrence Wakefield, 8th grade staff

At the end of the year, staff came together to process the year. We brainstormed  what worked, what didn’t work, and some ideas for next year. We thought that our daily reflections during our staff meetings worked because we talked about the day and what could be changed for the next work day. We also liked the structure of the day and how we only had buddy per person. We decided that supply baggies with sharpeners, pencils and coloring material worked because then the buddies weren’t required to bring their own supplies. We also liked having floaters because they made sure everything was going smoothly and that there were no problems. We also had snacks and designated water bottles for the staff which helped with not buying so much juice. Another thing that worked is we had people pick up their assigned kids to assure that the kids came to Homework Club. We also a sticker chart which kept track of the kid’s behavior and homework completion and we also had programs after Homework Club for the little kids such as Artsy April. Some other things that worked were things like the YIKES?!? page which is if your buddy consistently makes bad choices or does something extremely disruptive, they get written up on our YIKES!! sheet. This helps us keep track of what we are doing to make sure buddies are safe and successful. There are consequences for getting different numbers of YIKES. Something else that we think worked was the Meet and Greet in the beginning because it gave you a chance to meet your buddy.

However, although Homework Club was great there were a few things that didn’t work. These things would include people not showing up on time or even at all. Also people who weren’t using the YIKES?! page correctly or effectively. Another thing that didn’t work was people fussing and the high school buddies having too many middle school buddies. Something else that was decided to have not worked was having a split check between hours and money and the little buddies being distracted by the computers. We also decided that the location of the snack bin didn’t work because people went back and took extra snacks without paying for them.

Looking back at all the things that did work and what didn’t work, we decided to come up with some ideas for next year. We thought that next year we could have new rewards and consequences. We also decided that we could have better prizes for sticker chart and at the end of the month we would make sure that we had one boy winner and one girl winner.  For the middle school/high school tutoring sessions, we thought that next year all the 6th graders would be tutored in one room, the 7th graders in a different room, and the 8th graders in a third.   We also decided that the middle school  buddies should have a sticker chart, too. Last but not least we decided that there would be a surprise probation period once a month to catch those employees who slip up or aren’t serious about their jobs.

Overall, we are proud of how well Homework Club went this year-our FIRST year in the Dream House!

THANKS TO ABBOTSTON ELEMENTARY AND OUR GENEROUS FUNDERS FOR MAKING THIS YEAR POSSIBLE

By Youth Leader Lionel McCoy

Artsy April is a program held by Youth Dreamers. It’s for kids enjoyment and understanding through the arts. It’s for elementary students to interact with their peers and learn instruction with art. Artsy April was from April 6 to May 4 every Wednesday from 4:00 to 5:00.  It happened at the Dream House located at 1430 Carswell St. We recruited members who either attended Abbotston Elementary or who lived in the community. The class was taught by Towson University students Ms. Sam and Mr. Charles.  We didn’t need any additional funding because they donated their time and we already had plenty of art supplies on hand.

A typical day for this program looked like this….Students finished up their homework in Homework Club and then we gave them snack.  Next we brought them upstairs to the Youth Dreamer’s hideout where they got instruction from Mr. Charles and Ms. Sam with Youth Dreamer Lionel McCoy assisting. During this program, they made “Me Boxes” out of cigar boxes.  They painted the boxes, put their photographs in them and did drawings of things about them to put in them as well.  During the class, they got to interact with each other. Lastly, we talked about their days and what they wanted to talk about for a brief minute.  At the end of the program, all of the boxes were put on display in the Quiet Lounge at the Dream House. You should come and see them!

At the end, we looked at attendance and evaluations.  For the entire four weeks of the program, 11 out of 12 students attended every day and only one student missed one day. From the evaluations of the program, every student but one stated that they liked Artsy April “a lot” (compared to “a little,” “some,” and “not much”).  The majority of the students liked painting their boxes the most.  10 out of 12 students were happy about what they made “a lot.”  In terms of changes, some wanted to have more classes, some wanted more drawing instruction, and some didn’t want to change anything! 

In the future we hope to do this again. It was a huge success!  We would love for more Towson University students to get their teaching practice with us. 

Written by:  Lelah Ballah, Malaysia McGinnis, Arlecia Flood, Aisha Love, Caritta Stanley, India Trapp, TyeVaughn Parker, Lawrence Wakefield, Deja Joseph, Kyi Alford, and Cashmire Coombs

Before our wonderful 1st birthday party and tenth anniversary event on May 7th, we planned our morning and evening events. We started by assigning stations to everyone. Also, we had a clean up day to make sure our house was spotless. The staff of Homework Club and the Abbotston kids (who attend Homework Club) made bios to put around the house. We made birthday hats for the YD’s and the board members plus we decorated the YD house. The Youth Dreamers created banners and buttons for our beloved guests to enjoy. Ms. K, our director, made cupcakes for the event. Cashmire Coombs, Kyi Alford, Deja Joseph, Malaysia McGinnis and Lelah Ballah—some of our dedicated youth—decorated and iced some of those delicious cupcakes for the evening event.  Our friends from Starbucks took the pickets from off of our fence and prepared them by painting and priming. Keyani Kenny—another one of our dedicated loving members—and Deja Joseph picked out a fabulous caterer— “Water For Chocolate”—to make our food for the birthday party. A small group of YD’s made clay plates with artist Amanda Pellerin to sell at both events.

The community art class painted furniture that was auctioned off later that day at the evening event.  We sent out a press release, mailed invitations and posted all the information on our website to get people to attend our events. We had to make sure that everything was awesome for the YD Dream House 1st birthday party and 10th Anniversary of the Youth Dreamers.
During the Dream House’s 1st birthday party we did quite a lot. We played games, played the steel drums with Kevin Martin of Rockcreek Steel Drums, painted faces, decorated cupcakes, painted the pickets of our fence, and much more. Starbucks presented the Youth Dreamers with a $10,000 check (That will really help keep the Dream House open!!!). The mayor of Baltimore City, also known as Stephanie Rawlings- Blake, gave us a Certificate of Recognition! We helped the mayor’s daughter make her own personalized hat. Now back to Starbucks… they brought coffee and bagels. They did good ole’ fashioned manual labor and pulled weeds + mowed the lawn to prepare for the day. They even gave us a lawn mower and took apart our picket fence. At the evening event where we celebrated our 10th anniversary at Mt. Washington Tavern, we (adults!) enjoyed drink specials, auctioned off furniture and plates and we even sold a table.

Our 1st ever birthday party was a brilliant success!! We had lots of kids and the weather was perfect. We were so happy that the mayor of Baltimore and her daughter Sophia came to present us with a Certificate of Recognition! The youth staff did their jobs very well. One of the things that made our celebration a success was our gorgeous decorations created by our supportive youth staff. Also created by our staff was the furniture and unique plates that were sold in a silent auction at the 10th Anniversary Cupcakes and Cocktails event that evening at Mt. Washington Tavern.  However, we had two minor faults in our special day like getting the picket fences off of the fence and making sure that the stations were kept neat and clean. We also didn’t make very make money off of the events. But overall, our party was a success and the guests loved it! The mayor was even speechless and impressed, and her daughter wants to come back! “This was really fun!”shared a young participant. 

And now for our very important thank yous…..First and foremost, THANK YOU Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake for taking time out of your busy schedule to help support the Youth Dreamers. THANK YOU to Ms. Brianna for coordinating the evening event and helping set up, Ms. Mary Pat Clarke for advertising our events, Ms. Northe for cleaning up and washing dishes, and Ms. Liz for not only cleaning the house but also for helping at the welcome table. In addition, we would also like to THANK Mr. Jason for setting up in the evening, Mr. Jimmy for mowing the lawn, Mr. Sean for providing us with great food (he runs For Water For chocolate), and Ms. Marilyn for picking up food and punch, helping at the welcome table and driving kids home. Also THANK YOU to Ms. Carolyn for helping with welcome table and much more, Ms. Tamara for helping at the picket station, Ms. Sarah for helping with the hat station, and Mr. Chris for supervising. We greatly appreciate everyone’s help.

An extra special THANK YOU to Starbucks for not only helping with clean up, mulching, and the pickets, but also for mowing the lawn and buying us a brand new lawn mower.  And other special THANK YOUs to Cierra Cary (founder of the Youth Dreamers) who designed our invitations, Spectrum Printing & Graphics for donating the printing of them, Kevin Martin of Rockcreek Steel Drums for donating his time to teach us all to play the steel drums, Mike Dowgiewicz from Mt. Washington Tavern for donating the space for Cupcakes and Cocktails, and Mr. Mick Kipp for donating a batch of his delicious salsa!
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!!

Written by: Kyi Alford, Brikera Dinkins, Shanel Broadway, Pamela Jackson, TyeVaughn Parker-Scott, Caritta Stanley, Lawrence Wakefield, Brielle Richmond, Deja Joseph, and Denaria Duggins

There are many things we had to do to plan this event. To start, we had to look at last year’s reflections in order to plan the games and the community art project. We decided to make two trash can containers –one for the clinic and one for us, that could be placed outside so that community members and passer-bys will throw their trash in one can and their recycling in another. We decided to mosaic two sides of the containers and paint two sides. We had a contest to see what designs would go on the sides. Then we made a list of things to buy based on our plans and the $500 grant we received from Starbucks this year. (THANK YOU!) We then had to make and pass out invitations to all of our members of Homework Club, the neighbors, and the patients and staff at the Shepherd’s Clinic across the way. After that, we made sure that we could borrow tables from the clinic. We decided on who would be in charge of what games and stations, made nametags for everyone with their roles, designed posters to hang in the community, and created community surveys we could use on the day. We also worked with our community artist Ms. Tamara to make sure we knew how to run the mosaics stations.

We were supposed to have FunFest on Global Youth Service Day—April 16th, 2011. But it RAINED AND RAINED on that day so we postponed it to May 23rd, the last day of our Homework Club for the year. To start off the day, we had to set up the stations for the children and the community members—that included picket painting, mosaics, facepainting, basketball tournament and food. We had many fun games to play that day including wheelbarrow race, water balloon toss, the slippery melon contest, a hoola hoop contest, and a watermelon eating contest. There were over 20 Youth Dreamer students facilitating the day and over 45 young people and community members who attended. This was one of the biggest FunFest ever! Mr. Dwight, Cashmire’s uncle, did ALL of the grilling and ALL of the food was eaten! To end the day, we surveyed community members about how they felt about the day and what they want to see at the Dream House. Then we spent a lot of time cleaning up!

A few days later some Youth Dreamers came together to reflect on the day. What worked was the face painting, wheelbarrow race, basketball, mosaic trash can stations, the food, the hoola hoops and the picket painting. In addition, we had more kids than ever because they were kids who come to our programs on that day. What didn’t work was that fewer community members came because it was on a Monday, not all of the Youth Dreamers did their jobs, and there were not enough adult monitors to help out. We decided that next year, we will keep everything that worked, we will get more watermelons for the slippery melon contest, have a jump rope contest and egg race, get more adult volunteers who can lead teams of Youth Dreamers and make sure that they DO their jobs, and keep the date as the last day of Homework Club. According to the surveys that we used to interview community members, their favorite parts were the games, the kids, the food, and face painting and the basketball. Their least favorite parts were the water balloons and many said nothing . Their suggestions for next year were an egg race, sack race, more sports and more parents in attendance. Everyone said they would come next year which explains the 9.3 average (out of 10!)

We have many people to THANK for the success of FunFest! First we would like to thank MR. MATT who designed the mosaic trash cans and for buying and cutting the wood that was needed. We would also like to thank MR. JACK at the clinic for supporting us with the tables for the day and MS. TAMARA for helping to plan the mosaic trash cans. We have to thank MR. CHRIS and MS. KRISTINA for supervising and hosting and MR. DWIGHT for being the grill master at the event. HUGE THANKS TO STARBUCKS for providing the funding for the event. See you next year!!!

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice
Final Report written by Deja Joseph

The Youth Dreamers first cooking class EVER!!! This class was led by one of our high school students Kye Bunch. This class took place very Wednesday for about three months. This class took place in our pantry. We had students from the Stadium School coming to the program. We also had high school and middle school Homework Club staff come. We also had a program leader who recruited students and assisted throughout the program. Our program leader was Deja Joseph.

A typical day in cooking class was we all met in the pantry. We first started off with an icebreaker. By that time it was 5:15 so that everybody had time to get into the class. Once we had gone through all of this, the teacher would introduce what we were cooking and why she chose to cook it. Then we started to cook! Some of the things we cooked were homemade potato chips, pizza balls, pasta, breakfast for dinner, and cookies. Through all of that there was a lot of laughter and fun. We would eat, play and joke around. As we finished eating, we all helped to clean up the pantry and ended out with a good class. = )

From the evaluations at the end of the program, we learned that all of our 8 students thought the program was awesome. We also learned that 6 out of 8 students would come back. It was also the same ratio when we asked them would they tell friends. When we asked how did they enjoy the peer teaching 7 out of 8 said they loved it.

I would hope that we would have more cooking class—either taught by Kye or another adult volunteer! It was tons of fun to put our pantry to good use!

By High School Program Leader Breshay Wesson

(Click photo for larger image)
The UMD GroupWork Sessions are counseling sessions with students from the University of Maryland who are majoring in school counseling. Coming to the Dream House was part of their class requirements for Dr. Julia Bryan’s “Group Counseling in the Schools” class. High school and middle school students signed up to come to the sessions to discuss things on their minds based on different topics the college students presented or just general thoughts. Topics included the media’s impact on society and bad experiences during the day. The sessions were hosted in three rooms of the Dream House: the upstairs activity room, the downstairs lounge and the quiet lounge upstairs. They happened every Wednesday from 5:00 to 6:00 for six weeks. Two Program Leaders (one middle school and one high school) were hired to recruit students to participate and to make sure everything stayed in order during the sessions.

Before each session began, the college students (group leaders) reported to the site an hour early to start preparing. The students and group leaders split into their groups around 4:50. When 5:00 hit, they began the sessions. Students talked to the group leaders about everyday teenage life and how sometimes it can be very challenging for them. During one session, a student said, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in because I don’t do some of the things the other kids do; but never really knew if it was a good thing or not.” These sessions were extremely helpful to the community because they let every child know that they are recognized and that there is someone out there for them to talk to.

From the evaluations of the program, it seems that it was a success with students anxious to return. Every single participant wrote that they thought the program was “OMG, AWESOME!” (compared to, “OK..could have been better” and “not that enjoyable at all”) 100% also stated that they would suggest it to their peers next time. There were some suggestions of adding more activities during the sessions. In conclusion, the program did inspire many people and I believe it led many of the youth down the right path.

Since the ending of the program, the Youth Dreamers received a wonderful Christmas card and a University of Maryland ornament for their tree from the students at University of Maryland. One of the students also called to share that she felt that this class was, “the best class ever…we loved working with the Youth Dreamers!” We hope that Dr. Bryan will find a way to bring more of her students to the Dream House!

By Jessica White and Miriam Harris