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Often, more often than not, I am tempted to ask them to rethink their dreams to the more seemingly reasonable ones such as poultry keeping, farming, teaching etc.
The SALT experience has since changed my perspective about handling/going about the dream process. I have learned about the importance of letting communities share, appreciating their story, concerns etc and hearing from them and arranging the learning in their context or my context.
I have learnt that I need not control the dreams or rather influencing children and youth in expressing their dreams. I have learnt that it is important not to question or to dismiss these dreams no matter how big and impossible they may sound. I have learnt that I need to listen to them, let them share how they want and are planning to achieve them. That I don’t need to prevent children and youth from making mistakes just because I have preconceived ideas about their potential capacity.
I will learn to listen more and will transfer what I have learned to other adults working in my program, particularly about using SALT process in the dream creation, process for youth and children so that they too can avoid controlling the dream creation process due to their preconceived ideas about what can work.
From now on, it’s all about SALTY dreams!
In many of these sessions, I often listen to tens of dreams in about 2 hours or more. As the young people and the children describe their dreams, they express them with joy and hope and even awe. For example, it is not rare to find some, in the most remote of places, having dreams such as ‘to be pilots or doctors’. It is often a challenge for me and other adults working with these children to relate to these dreams, “seemingly big dreams”, given that these children and youth have little or no education, have very low incomes or no incomes at all. And yet the dreams that they aspire to achieve require huge resources to be accomplished.
A story of Local Response by Caroline Thuo
My work involves helping young people work towards the realisation of their dreams. Part of this process involves sitting down with them and encouraging them to reflect and to express their dreams or what they would like to achieve. They then identify assets that they have and that they can use as a first step towards realising their dreams.
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