Make A Difference is a youth driven, non profit organization working to ensure better outcomes for children in orphanages and street shelters. MAD’s vision is to help children in shelter homes realize equitable outcomes. As of today, the support of Make a Difference reaches out to 4250 children living in 77 shelter homes in 23 cities in India.

WHAT IS DREAM CAMP?

Dream Camp is a two-three day outbound camp that enables the children to connect with their dreams and be more aware about their future goals and understand what it takes to achieve those dreams through personal discovery, and exploration of new talents by challenging themselves and taking responsibility of their actions. The second objective we aim to fulfil is to give them the best holiday experience that we can, while also designing development sessions and diverse workshops to facilitate their personal growth and provide them with positive new experiences. The primary focus is to bridge the gaps between their dreams and the reality of achieving them. The children come out with a higher morale and feeling more self-confident than ever before through exposure to new experiences and things that they have not encountered before. On top of that, this provides them with an opportunity to take a break from the strict routine they follow every day.

PROJECT MISSION AND GOALS

Dream Camp’s core mission is to address the issue of lack of belief of children in their abilities and self-motivation by making them believe in their dreams and increasing self-confidence that would pave a path for them to continue their education. The newly gained self-confidence helps them to cope with any new experiences that they haven’t encountered in their shelter home environment and makes it easier for them to transition into the outer world.

The minimum goal for this program is therefore to ensure that they have a dream for themselves and learn to set short term and long term goals to pursue it. This growth plays a pivotal role in their lives as adults, building both their self-esteem as well as confidence to make their own decisions with respect to their education and much more.

Through the Dream Camp Program we have been able to inspire children to think beyond what they have seen in their closed environments and make practical life choices. This enables them to cope up with new experiences and take ownership of themselves like never before.

CHANDIGARH AND DC STRUGGLES

MAD’s interventions don’t fall into the simple categories that traditional funders are familiar with, hence we are not able to get all our costs covered. Due to this, we have the requirement of unrestricted funding for the projects that don’t have a fixed expenditure year by year, various examples being scholarships, stipends for college going students, placements, crisis funding, trainings, team readiness, succession planning, class monitoring, programmatic quality improvement etc.

We are facing a FUND CRUNCH, hence the need to prioritize funding at this point in time.

The goal is to raise sponsorships at a city level. MAD Chandigarh is associated with two shelter homes in tricity and will be organising the Dream Camp for the same.

To make the Dream Camp a success, we need funding and sponsorships for various aspects of the Dream Camp namely accommodation, food, transport and session collaterals.

One of the campaigns initiated by us for this is the Ketto campaign that will help us overcome this obstacle.

Link- https://mad.ketto.org/fundraiser/grantadream

 

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