A Community of Dreamers

by Anna McKeon

Here at PEPY, we’re committed to expanding opportunities for Cambodian youth as they learn how to identify their goals for the future as well as how to achieve them. We believe that having the courage to dream big dreams is an important catalyst for change and that a critical step in this process is to voice dreams aloud by sharing them with others.

By making our dreams known to others, we start to hold ourselves accountable. We start to take next steps. We start to support each other in making progress towards our goal. And that process of articulating our dreams for the future is what we wanted to focus on as the theme of this year’s Power of 10 campaign – dream BIG! We wanted to share this philosophy with YOU — our friends and supporters— and learn about your dreams, while also giving you the opportunity to explore the dreams of Cambodian leaders and others from the PEPY family around the world.

We created an online dreamboard where you can explore, share, and even subscribe to dreams from all over the world – as well as submit your own. We’ve had a fantastic response to the dreamboard: we now have over 80 dreams from people in nearly a dozen countries, including 4-year-old dreamers as well as dreamers with grandchildren, and we have been inspired and moved by the depth and beauty of these dreams that we have collected throughout our campaign.

Our dreamboard project was embraced by our staff both in Siem Reap and Chanleas Dai, and also by members of our extended PEPY community in Cambodia. In addition, we were fortunate enough to be invited by TEDx Phnom Penh to facilitate a “dream workshop” as part of their simulcast event. Our PEPY team created a dream station at which TEDx attendees could craft their own dreamcards and join in the dream BIG movement as part of The Power of 10.

Although The Power of 10 campaign has come to a close, we will be maintaining the dreamboard and including it in various projects over the coming year, so it is a living, growing entity! We hope the dreamboard will continue to provide a meaningful way to connect both the communities we work with in Cambodia and our team on the ground with our international network of supporters and friends. So if you haven’t shared your dream already – please do!