Our vision

Learning Dreams creates a culture of learning. We provide intense home and community-based support for parents and children to help them become active members of a culture of learning. Learning Dreams works with the parent's deepest motivations, their personal dreams and hopes for their own lives and the lives of their children. We build their strengths and continue to support them over time as they make progress realizing their learning dreams.

Learning Dreams breaks out of the mold of waiting for schools to tackle issues that belong to the family and their community. That is why Learning Dreams offers new hope.

Working with many families in a community over time, Learning Dreams re-energizes and builds sustainable support for an enduring culture of successful learning. Learning Dreams assists families to connect with libraries, employment centers, community colleges, and other resources. Using a family's own dreams as a motivating force, Learning Dreams links them to the vast local learning network. In this process community institutions also become more effective at connecting to families and the learning network becomes more creative and inclusive.

The following principles of practice are based on the experience of Learning Dreams pilot projects and current research in education and community development:

• Learning is fundamentally anchored in the home and community (not school)
• Parents must be involved in their own learning (not simply supporting their children)
• Parents and children can learn, even in troubled homes
• Support for learning leads to increased family and community capacity to support learning
• Building community capacity to support learning leads, over time, to improved school outcomes
• Schools must respect and support the home and community as places of learning
• A local neighborhood-based educator is crucial to involving families successfully
• Organizing a community around learning is not threatening and therefore receives enormous support
• People from all cultures are inherently curious and love to learn, therefore Learning Dreams is adaptable to diverse cultures
• Success in education leads to poverty reduction