dream:in new york report

8/3/2019 DREAM:IN New York Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/dreamin-new-york-report 1/12

DREAM:IN MotiveDreaming together from two parts of the world and bringing together design talent and funds to realise billions of dreams.

We challenge the notion that ‘future thinking’ should be based on

people’s needs. Our initiative, DREAM:IN, has explored what Indians

are dreaming about. Its aim has been to create a dynamic database of

dreams gathered in cities, towns and villages across India. They have been

categorized, analyzed and shared with business leaders, educators, social

entrepreneurs, policymakers and designers to devise a transformative and

an inclusive future.

The pilot project took place in two parts, beginning with the DREAM:IN

Journey (8th – 19th January, 2011), which sent 101 students from various

universities across the world to cities, towns and villages all over India tocapture dreams. And, a DREAM:IN Conclave that brought together leaders,

students, academicians, industrial czars and many more to analyze the

captured dreams and create new scenarios and ventures that would serve

as a solution to people’s dreams.



Parsons, The New School for Design, hosted its first annual fest between

7th and 28th May, 2011. There were guest lectures, exhibitions of student

work, social events, shows, panel discussions, career workshops and

extracurricular activities that aimed to inspire creativity.

An integral and important part of this festival was the DREAM:IN

presentation that took place on 10th May, 2011. The event was organized by

DREAM:IN volunteers and earlier participants from Parsons. It was a result of

the collaborative effort between Team India and Team New York. The event

was a stepping stone and it officially took DREAM:IN to a global level.

The event was open to the entire New York community. It was attended bystudents, financial experts, academicians, working professionals and other

believers. The event kick started at the Kellen auditorium with videos of

interviews done during the DREAM:IN Journey.

As the guests arrived, the DREAM:IN Team encouraged them to share

their dreams either by writing on the Dream Tree or by recording a dream

at the video booth that was custom-made for the event.

Sarah Ahmed, a senior student at Parsons, played host for the day.



The Opportunity: Designing for billions

Bruce Nussbaum, Fast Co. — Dreamcatalyst and Big Dreamer— explaining

the opportunity that DREAM:IN offers for the billions of people in India. Hespoke about the project in brief and offered the New York Community a

chance to be a part of the initiative.

The Vision: What Indians are dreaming about

Sonia Manchanda— Director: Design, DREAM:IN— shared her vision about

the project. [Video]

The Project: A crossroad for large scale innovation

Carlos Teixeira— Director: Networks, DREAM:IN— spoke about the open

innovation system that described both the organizational and funding

structure requirements for DREAM:IN. He also introduced the various

believers and supporters of the project, without whom none of this would

have been possible.

This included Spread Education and Consulting, Idiom Design and

Consulting Ltd., Nodes, Design Knowledge Network, Parsons The New

School for Design, The School of Design Strategies, Future Group, Manipal

University and Instituto Vivarta.

The Journey: 101 dreamcatchers, 25,000 km,

3,000 dreamsThe speech was followed by a presentation by Natalie Wang—Student

at Parsons, Dreamcatcher and Dreamscholar— and Rahul Vijaykumar—

Project leader, DREAM:IN— of the various experiences that took place

during the DREAM:IN Journey. They also spoke about planning the journey,

the logistics involved, the Dreamcatching training workshops, process of

Dreamcatching, personal experiences and social media and technology’s

role during the Journey.

Videos of the dreams were then screened, post which there was a short break.

The Conclave: 51 Investment Opportunities

After the break, Bruce, Ken Stevens— Dreamcatalyst, Heico Wesselius—

Dreamleader and Margarita Fakih Name—Dreamscholar shared their

experiences and learning from the DREAM:IN conclave. During the talk, the

Dreamscape model and other ventures were showcased and discussed,

thus giving a concrete insight about the Conclave and the potential of the

DREAM:IN Initiative.



Two videos that elucidated this potential were showcased. The first one,

“No Limits”— was an in-depth analysis of why people need to dream

and how India is transforming into a place where dreams of the world can

be soon realised. The second video, “I am India” — was a philosophical

introduction to India, its people and its culture.

The Mission: Dream realization

Later, Carlos introduced new ventures and asked the audience to

participate and become a part of the ventures and the DREAM:IN society.

The audience were invited to join the initiative and become leaders by

meeting experts and thought leaders from all across the globe. This would

help them identify and adapt local insight for opportunities, starting up new

ventures, raising funds and co-designing organisations.

Seven main ventures were highlighted and discussed. They were:

WEB: Women Empowerment Bank:

By putting a new spin on existing financial models, the Women

Empowerment Bank aims to change the perception of women’s education

amongst families and society itself.

W.E.B will peg the interest rates of its loans to the education level of

individual women in the family therein reducing the interest rates when

a woman pursues further education.



For example, when a girl enters primary school the interest rate of the

family’s loan will be set at 15%. As the same girl advances through the

education system, the interest rate would be reduced to 5% when she

reaches college. This literal approach to giving women more financial

power within the family also leads to a more inclusive system as it

disregards race, age and caste to emphasize solely on education.

APNA SAPNA (Assurance):

This concept marks the start of a revolution banking on a person’s

dreams rather than tackling his needs/problems in order to create a

better life. Instead of buying ‘insurance’ (e.g. negative connotation:

assets for unfortunate circumstances), an individual can purchase

‘assurance’ through the Sapno Kae Masters/Apna Sapna program. This

assurance comes in the form of Knowledge Service Hubs that educate anddisseminate information for whatever genre one requires to grow and

prosper. This includes knowledge in fields such as agriculture,

education, health, livelihood, art & crafts, culture, etc that are

provided through knowledge exchange partners (e.g. universities,

hospitals, I.T industry, retailers).

The initial model looks at a state-side pilot program wherein each

village, there will be a center with at least two computers to serve the

needs of its members. The pilot scheme targets groups such as farmers,

housewives, artisans and children who seek to improve their general

knowledge or have specific questions related to their field. Likewise,

the members will also have the opportunity to impart their existing

specialized knowledge in these fields back to the center. One virtual

hub will serve a cluster of 50 villages each to collect information and

specific needs from each center. These hubs will be connected to the

state through power houses who will then process the data and transmit

relevant personalized information back to the hubs/centers accordingly.

With 30 states serving 400 hubs per state to 6 lakh villages, the

potential market and vertical growth for these villages is tremendous

even in a pilot run of 6 months - 1 year.. By charging a low monthly

fee of Rs10 per person, the opportunity in revenue comes down to Rs. 5

million revenue and Rs 15 crore per state monthly. The additional

revenue can even lead to these Centers being used as brokerage hubs.

Ticket to Parliament:

To get Indian youths more politically active, this interesting venture

taps into the popularity of current reality TV shows on channels such as

MTV and Bindass by producing a similar program tentatively titled

‘Ticket to Parliament’. Students compete on the show in a series of

challenges related to public services and policies in order to win an

opportunity become an intern in parliament. Each challenge will be

shaped to impart the message that each person in society makes a

difference by taking a stand and that even the little things count. In

order to gain national awareness, the results will be based on a mix of

judges and audience voting via mobile/internet. The production of the



series will be dependent on funding from corporations, government and

media channels themselves with the returns based on advertisements and

sponsorships.

India Sports Portal:

One of the key observations from the state of the nation is the

increasing passion for sports amongst its youth. Within such a vast

country though, there exists differing levels of knowledge, skills and

aptitude which this idea seeks to bridge and literally create an ‘even

playing field’ for Indian athletes to compete and excel. The Indian

Sports Portal is social networking and information portal for male and

female athletes across India to share and get updated on the latest news

and events within all sporting realms. For a small fee to be part of the

network, members can attend offline workshops by national athletes, get

discounts from partnering sports brands, learn nutrition and fitness

tips from experts and compare their achievements to their peers.By shaping sports as a ‘religion’ in itself (e.g. with iconography,

theme songs, national pride, etc), this will encourage a greater

interest and commitment from aspiring athletes and also become a

talentpool for scouts eager to find the next sports hero.

Pop-up Fun School:

The adage of making learning fun for children plays a key role in this

initiative — especially since existing school enrollment in rural

regions is inconsistent at best. The question raised becomes how do we

make learning continuous in the face of low-incomes, unsupportive

families and gender inequalities? The Pop-up Fun School attempts to

solve this issue by combining education and entertainment in a mobile

environment. Through partnerships with NGOs and game companies, the

pop-up schools will travel in modified trailers to perform educational

skits and encourage participation in games and activities that impart

knowledge and build skills. Families will also be encouraged to join in

the fun through craft classes and entertainment for their demographic.

As these schools work with local performance groups, local teachers and

college students to generate content, the constant traveling between

villages also allows the schools to pick up on the villagers’

educational needs and culture in order to shape their curriculum

accordingly. This ensures that students learn relevant and timely

material which they can work on until the next scheduled visit of the

pop-up school.

Sports Army:

Despite the popularity of games like cricket in India, sports is

generally seen as non-viable career option and a luxury to those in

rural communities. In comparison, the military and police force are

deemed as highly respected and desirable fields to pursue instead. By

adapting this mind-set with the concept of a ‘sports army’, this social

initiative aims to inculcate the benefits of sports participation

amongst children in rural communities. Children will be encouraged to



join the sports army in order to pick up social interaction skills,

discipline, self-confidence, teamwork as well as generally improving

their health and nutrition. This NGO organization will work with young

volunteers to coach teams of village children from 6 - 15 years old in

both sports and other activities designed to improve the welfare of the

community (e.g. village chores, social responsibilities).

Health Phone:

How does one ensure access to basic healthcare in a nation of 8 billion

people despite geographical and socioeconomic hurdles? By leveraging

existing communication tools and redefining healthcare provision itself.

India has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world and

most, if not all residents will have cellphone access. Through the set-up of

a basic information helpline that serves to educate and diagnose symptoms

of common afflictions, this streamlines the process for an individual to

identify and receive help in an affordable manner. This service can be rolledout as a basic kit per village which will also include first aid manuals and

reference guides that can be integrated into an application on phones.

When an individual calls the helpline, he will have access through various

language options and differing levels of help (e.g. immediate connection to

ambulance and doctors) based on urgency.



Open Innovation @ Parsons: The NY HubCarlos and Rahul presented the DREAM:IN portal — an open web platformthat allows users to share their dreams with the world, DREAM:IN Centre

— a state-of-the-art facility in Bangalore that will incubate projects and

become a hub for innovation, DREAM:IN business model — that explains

what funds were needed, how they will be used, what the various targets

are and the various on-ground DREAM:IN activities.

Towards the end, the event seemed like a promising start to DREAM:IN

worldwide and the audience were updated about its activities in various

countries such as Brazil, Chile and Sri Lanka. This led to a lively Q&A

session, which gave interesting perspectives about the project.

Some wondered why India should be seeking help from foreigners

instead of supporting themselves, however, it was clari fied that themajority of the dreamcatchers were from India and only a few of them

were from abroad.

There was also a talk about setting up a full scale DREAM:IN centre in

New York with Parsons’ support. Meanwhile, an educator and social

entrepreneur suggested creating a mentorship programme for giving

direction to social entrepreneurship and design thinking. Another personpointed out that a concept like DREAM:IN is not limited to India, it could be

a global portal for idea generation.

Some were of the opinion that tradition as well as innovation must be

combined to realise these ventures. There was an agreement to mobilise

clusters and sources for funds.



Others were looking to align their education models with this initiative.

And, a few others wanted an event specifically for financial sector and

investors to refine important information, as they sensed potential here.

Various other questions were raised, like how to create a start up when

a person does not have past knowledge but wants to be involved; how

young is young to capture dreams; for those who volunteer can the year be

considered as a gap year as it adds value to higher education; how are we

protecting these ideas worth millions of dollars; can DREAM:IN be a form

of nationalism, where Indians invest in the dreams of their nation; and how

are we inviting venture capitalists.

Reactions about DREAM:IN (via Twitter) below.

Bruce Nussbaum’s Tweets:

“#dreamin Building a pool of aspirations- dreams that connect to VCs and other enablers to build start-ups and NGOs to enable dreams.”

“#dreamin Model mobilizes students and to capture the aspirations of

people and shape startups and NGOs to enable those dreams.”

“#dreamin Dream Catchers = design students who teamed up to travel

25,000 kilometers in India to identify, interview & film dreams.”

“#dreamin Students used a Dream Catching Kit, like the Open IDEO toolkit,

to do their ethnography in India.”

“#dreamin Needed to recruit students from local areas who spoke the local

Indian languages. All dreams were expressed in local language.”

“#dreamin Panasonic provided rugged laptops to all the teams traveling

thru India.”

“#dreamin Before sending out the students, Idiom used Facebook to get to

know them and for them to know each other.”

“#dreamin Big Indian dreams? Education. Starting business. Women’s

rights. Preserving traditional craft. Service to nation-army.”

“#dreamin Refined thousands of dreams to 50 Dream Ideas. My group

developed Edu-Cafe startup concept: Deliver education via Internet cafes.:

“#dreamin Call for action! Pilot 3 ventures in India from DreamIn concepts

to business plan and realty. Recruiting volunteers & financing.”

“#dreamin conference--Sonia Manchanda, co-founder of India’s Idiom

consultancy, is brilliant conceiver of D-VC. Dream/Design-Venture Capital.”

“#dreamin conference: Sonia Manchanda, co-founder of India’s Idiom, is

the next C.K. Prahalad. She’s the one to watch for new ideas.”



Carlos Teixeria’s Tweets:

“@DREAMIN_NY @DREAMIN_Team To bring global design expertise to

work on local dreams and aspirations”

“@DREAMIN_NY @DREAMIN_Team My vision? CALL FOR ACTION. We

need to recruit 15 young leaders to realize 3 DREAM:IN Ventures”

“@DREAMIN_NY @DREAMIN_Team Helping people engage with

unfamiliar situations and teaching them how to make “what if...?”

questions”

“@DREAMIN_NY @DREAMIN_Team I want leaders to have a passion for

people, the desire to empower the dreamers, and investors to become

believers”

“@DREAMIN_Team @DREAMIN_NY Tomorrow I want to bring Indian’s

dream to NY, and the global design community to dream about India”

“@DREAMIN_Team @DREAMIN_NY One design at a time for billions of

people”

Sonia Manchanda’s tweets:

“@DREAMIN_NY Basically we realised that facts and figures are good

indicators but dreams are even better since dreams have no limits.”

“@DREAMIN_NY Give us infinite opportunities to imagine tomorrow and

create it, with the people, for the people!”

“@DREAMIN_NY People are our biggest problem and our biggest

opportunity in India!”

“#dreamin Many innovations/publications/activities and even ventures to

compress the time from mind to market. From dream to realization!”

“#dreamin mobilizing both talent clusters and sources of funds.”

“Philanthropy for Dreamseeding activities. Sponsorship for journeys/

conclaves. Microseeding enterprises! Venture funding for the Portal!”

“#dreamin @DREAMIN_NY Young is learning and open!”

“@DREAMIN_NY Next step is meeting investors in Brazil/22 May. India

next. USA next. And the portal is going to be terribly exciting + global!”

Tweets of the DREAM:IN Team from New York:

“@DREAMIN_Team is a form of nationalism.”

“Do you believe culture, economic and politics affect the way we dream?

#dreamin @CarlosTeixeira4”

“Insight into dream in with @brucenussbaum, mentions that he was blown

away intellectually in India”

“DreamIN is an economic social and political model, it changes the



conversation about everything we thought. @brucenussbaum”

“In America the power of students and their skills is undermined, dreamin

allows students to have a database of dreams @brucenussbaum”

“how do we look at dreams and aspirations and design for that @

CarlosTeixeira4”

“@heico where does the innovation come from? it comes from the people?

who are you engaged with? “

“@heico people as catalysts for dreams.”

“Ken Stevens- A dream is an idea that has just begun to breathe.”

“Design at its best, experienced in India- Ken Stevens”

“dreams are deeper than needs. Design, Innovate, to lead tomorrow.”

“12.6 million square miles... India is the future of the world.”

“@DREAMIN_Team could we insert a dream year to value add to our

higher education?”

“@DREAMIN_Team is a venture which combines institutions, organizations

and individuals to people and their dreams”

“dreamin helps establish successful design network to dream believe and

realize! #dreamin”

“Director of @Design_IDIOM @sonia_manchanda about “new stream of

collective consciousness and the best reality check ever.” cc @dreamin_NY”

“we need to bring global expertise in large scale to local needs, local

expectations and local aspirations - @CarlosTeixeira4”

“How do designers work with venture capitalists on phase zero for social

good.” @carlosteixeira4”

“Open Innovation System - a model for fluid and fragmented markets@

CarlosTeixeira4 cc @DREAMIN_NY”

“Dreamscape -self sustained living, social responsibility, greenspace from

@DREAMIN_NY + @heico”

“More specifically, how are we using open innovation for ideas that are

worth millions of dollars of intellectual property? @brucenussbaum @

carlosteixeira4”

“DREAM:IN is probably the best project, talk, idea I’ve seen presented at

Parsons. Very excited! @carlosteixeira @DREAMIN_NY @dreamin_team”



As the event ended, it became clear that DREAM:IN NY/Parsons

marked the first step into setting up a full-scale DREAM:IN operations in

New York. More questions and constructive feedback from the audience

was an indicator of the excitement and belief in DREAM:IN’s potential.

It has helped to make a new shift from traditional ventures to a design

venture-capital model. As we move forward with an open call for young

entrepreneurs to participate and realise the highlighted DREAM:IN

ventures, the main mantra that resonates amongst believers in

New York and India is that it’s time to not just be inspired, but to

become inspiring.

Participate: [email protected]

Read: dreaminnewyork.wordpress.com

Follow: www.twitter.com/#!/DREAMIN_NY

Learn: dreamin.in

Watch: www.vimeo.com/dreamin

Belong: www.facebook.com/dreaminteam

dream:in new york report

Documents