Join us by taking action today:1. Invite others to join you by forwarding this email to a colleague.
2. Donate via PayPal. 
3. Write a check payable to Dreams InDeed and send it to: Dreams InDeed International P.O. Box 30730 Phoenix, AZ 85046 4. Discover the DNA of Development:
Explore the Values
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Also Featured
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"Too Small to Fail"
Haskell to present at Berkeley and Duke.
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Read about it!
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The frigid air flowing through the broken window didn't cool the flaring tempers. No surprise there. These women are urban survivors in a sectarian no man's land. It's what came next that shocked me. A plucky teenage girl jumped in with both arms raised high.
"Stop! No fighting! STOP! No politics! This is not us! We are Joy of Giving. We practice love, forgiveness, respect. We gathered here to talk! To work together!" Sure, teens are impulsive, dramatic, idealistic. But where bullets fly, her stance is profound. Here on the front lines, gunfire tattoos walls. Rocketing grenades pierce homes. Death visits early and often. This was day one, gathering local moms to discuss how to raise their kids together in peace. A values-aligned visionary had called Dreams InDeed for help. Her dream? To birth a model community together, right on that demarcation line. Day two confirmed this birth would be agonizing. |
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Celebrations or Conflagrations?
POP...pop, pop, pop. POP...pop, pop, pop..."
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Neighborhood building with gunfire erosion.
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"What's that?" I wondered. I glanced at that same teen sitting next to me with her hair fashionably covered. Her eyes sparkling, she said with a smile, "Don't worry - those are fireworks."
Puzzled, I queried, "Fireworks, midday? How do you know?"
"Oh, there must be a party. Gunfire sounds different. It's easy to tell once you get used to it." The headmistress of the school where we met agreed, "Guns definitely sound different." We listened for a few minutes. Then my young friend exclaimed, "Now, that's gunfire!"
Ringing the dismissal bell, the headmistress barked out, "Let's go now! Leave! RUN!" The students poured out of classrooms and down the broken, uneven stairs. The agile ones sped past us. We sprinted over an open area and hopped in our van, our petite dreamer driving. As our teenage friend jumped out by her home, she waved goodbye with that same sweet smile, "Don't worry!"
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Cultivating Trust.
Turning onto the main street, we screeched to a halt. A young man who recognized our van ran out to stop us. He diverted us down an alley to avoid a street battle. We weaved through more chaos and running uniformed men. Then, with a glance in the rear-view mirror, our dreamer's face blanched.
A soldier with an AK-47 ready approached behind us. She hit the gas, and we were gone.
We made it to our overnight staging point, unharmed. A demonstration in another country had ignited tensions in our urban tinderbox, linked to regional clans. After a flurry of cell phone calls, we got the good news. No one killed that day. Just several wounded.
Cultivating trust had just become one step harder.
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Same building after a Joy of Giving team renovated it with community volunteers.
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But our petite dreamer was undaunted. That next morning, we were back building bridges, home by home. Year after year, her teenage ally had seen the values at work in community service, cultivated in relationship.
Love. Forgiveness. Respect.
That's how this teen came to embrace, model, and advocate for those values as an insider in a very hard place. With coaching by Dreams InDeed, she and her Joy of Giving volunteer friends are establishing a community center together to bridge sectarian divides for the common good of neighborhood children.
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Friends InDeed.
This neighborhood is a microcosm of a region in violent upheaval.
In over two decades of work in Middle Eastern hard places, we've never seen such unprecedente
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Neighborhood children gave us their viewpoints by drawing a community map.
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d turmoil and gloomy apprehension. However, we've also never witnessed such exemplary modeling of a tangible alternative about how to live together. Light is penetrating darkness, despite the turmoil.
Giving birth to a new community on a sectarian demarcation line requires a network of hands, linked in love, forgiveness, and respect. Hands linked across the line, hands linked with those on the line, and beyond the line. Picture a new community with sustained peace of mind, where one people unified in their diversity, stand up together with each other in dignity and stability.
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Rewarding Labor.
In December, we invited you to link hands with us to bring the dreams of the dead to life across the Middle East. You and our Board match did just that, giving $42,252 and exceeding our target. With your support, Dreams InDeed is seizing unprecedented opportunities across the region:
- In Egypt, a spiritual values curriculum that Dreams InDeed co-designed with a local dreamer significantly improved performance of 170 health caregivers serving the housebound and chronically ill. Dreams InDeed presented the pre-publication results of this case at the American University of Beirut business school, sharing how to harness values for mission impact. AUB has invited us back to chair a panel in May, seeking to inspire a new generation of Arab innovators.
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Sharing the love.
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- In rural Lebanon, we've helped a dreamer team improve their sustainable stewardship as they educate over 700 children at risk of child labor and sectarian conflict. Many graduates are family-firsts in stable jobs, breaking the poverty cycle. As waves of turmoil crash over their area, this dreamer's next challenge is to fill students' vacuum of despair with solid values formation.
- In yet another country engulfed by civil strife, we've coached a dreamer to found a residential community for mentally-challenged adult orphans. Surviving a heart attack, he's formed a board, secured land, drafted plans, raised grants, and identified staff. His next hurdle in his fragile start-up is sustaining team morale and momentum as rule of law collapses around him.
- And region-wide, after a decade of hard place pilots, this spring we publish a dreamer's values curriculum contextualized for the moral formation of marginalized children. The publisher's launch event in Beirut will help put this material to work in the hands of Arab educators.
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Lend a Hand.
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Photo by Bruce McKay
Yellow Snow Photography
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Can you lend a hand? We encourage you to forward this email today to a friend, with an invitation to subscribe at dreamsindeed.org. If each one brings one, we'll hit our 2012 target of 500 new friends.
Helping bring dreams to life,
Janice Hayashi Haskell
Vice-President for Program Development
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Join us by taking action today:
- Expand the network and invite others to befriend our dreamers.
- Donate Via PayPal
- Make a check payable to Dreams InDeed International. Mail check to:
Dreams InDeed International, P.O. Box 30730, Phoenix, AZ 85046
Please contact us with your questions and how we may be of better service to you.
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