DreamRider Productions

With my non-profit, DreamRider Productions, I have developed ground-breaking enviro-educational programs that could catalyze world-wide change. However, as a small organization, already overstretched, we need resources to bring our solution to families across the globe.

Research says that to drive social/cultural change in a given population, messaging needs to reach 25% of said population. So far, DreamRider has reached over 1 million children in 350+ cities across Canada and in 11 other countries…and we are just getting started!

Our flagship initiative is the Planet Protector Academy (PPA), a suite of web-based interactive programs that inspire kids to take offline action. Some examples of its impact: 90% of participating children take environmental “missions” home to their families. 60-80% of parents change behaviours as a result (driving less, conserving energy, saving water, reducing waste). In one survey, 87.5% of families maintained their new habits one year later. Last spring, 80% of children in quarantine reported feeling calmer and 68% felt happier after participating in the PPA.

The heart of what we do is transformational learning that ignites joy and strength in kids, and empowers them to take collective action. Elevate Prize funding would help us scale our impact widely and effectively.

I am an artist, environmental activist, Ashoka Fellow, and social change leader who has devoted my life and career to empowering kids, training them to be planet-protecting superheroes. 

I grew up deeply connected to nature. In 1990, while I was living in Tofino, BC, the rainforest in my backyard was clear-cut by my landlady. With a few other young people, I became a lead organizer of the famous Clayoquot Blockades, Canada’s biggest environmental civil disobedience action, widely credited for jumpstarting Canada’s environmental movement.

In 1998, I co-founded DreamRider Productions, and my team and I developed a pioneering youth engagement methodology that combines comedy, musical theatre, community ritual, and transformational learning to help kids lead change in their families and communities. This magic formula is at the core of all the enviro-educational programming that DreamRider has created over the past 20+ years, and the main reason for its profound, far-reaching impact.

As a half-Arab/half-Scottish woman, I strive to lead consciously on matters of race: moving my formerly all-white DreamRider team through a process of decolonization and anti-racism, and diversifying representation across our programming, especially Indigenous representation.

  My overarching goal: a worldwide culture shift towards kindness, joy, and interconnectedness with the earth.

DreamRider Productions Society (DRP) is a multimedia production company and registered charity with a focus on youth engagement in environmental issues. We harness the power of theatre, music, film and interactive media to create transformative experiences for children and families that drive measurable behaviour change.

Transforming behaviour is notoriously hard: culture eats policy for breakfast. Programs that rely solely on information to motivate action are often ineffective. Cognitive scientists have shown that deep cultural shifts have more to do with identity, emotions and ideology than data and facts.  To overcome barriers of disempowerment or disengagement, citizens need to believe in and practice new values like interdependence and interconnectedness within the family unit and community. More than ever in this time of pandemic and climate chaos, solutions are needed that not only teach the mind, but also acknowledge and address social and emotional challenges.

  Through programming that draws on cutting-edge change-maker research, and engages kids’ minds, bodies, and hearts, DreamRider shifts behaviour AND culture. We inspire children to become leaders, and they in turn impact the values and behaviours of their parents.

We are aware of no other virtual solution in the world that combines story, arts and gamification with real-world action, and/or that reliably creates measurable, lasting behaviour change both in children and in their families. The Planet Protector Academy won the TELUS Innovation Award in 2015, and has been described as “one of the most advanced examples of engaging trans-media that I have seen anywhere in the education space at any level" (Phil Chatterton, Former Regional Sales Executive, Blackboard Collaborate).

Our approach transcends cultural barriers that other programs can’t cross; our programs are proven in 12 countries, in as different cultures as Canada, South Africa and India. In our India pilot, children changed not only their parents but also their teachers, their school, their communities and even the city infrastructure!

 Unlike other initiatives that focus on intellectual, fact-based approaches with little action or measured change, the PPA uses a superhero story framework, infused with comedy, music, crafts, games and FUN, to initiate children into a community of practice for environmental stewardship. It then leverages the power of ‘kids bugging their parents’ to drive lasting change, one family at a time – and motivates them to measure their impact as they go.

When she was six, Tesicca Truong experienced a DreamRider touring show at her school. Now 26, she is an award-winning climate change strategist, and she ran for office in BC’s most recent provincial election, on a climate platform. She credits DreamRider for inspiring her lifetime of change. See more: https://bit.ly/3hoTQqw

We envision a whole world full of kids like Tesicca. Our goal is to transform global mainstream culture, and the Planet Protector Academy suite is designed to be massively scalable in order to achieve that. Its technological infrastructure includes a robust cloud database that can handle a huge number of users; the web platforrm is built to handle future growth components such as language versioning, content regionalization by location, ability to host unlimited “missions” so that topic areas/content can be expanded, and more.

Pre-COVID, we used the elementary school classroom as a vector for reaching a broad and diverse general population. Since the pandemic began, we have been exploring ways to reach kids and families outside of the school system (avoiding the challenges of limited teacher capacity), via different mechanisms such as live webcasts, and/or an app that kids could use on their mobile or tablet.

The people DreamRider serves most directly are the kids who participate in our programs:

# of people DreamRider served in 2020-21 school year: 22,000 

# of people we anticipate serving in in 2021-22 school year: 40,000

Our goal is to help transform global culture to one of kindness and planet protection. We plan to achieve this by expanding the reach of our Planet Protector Academy (PPA) programming and youth engagement methodology across Canada, throughout North America, and overseas.

The PPA suite is designed to be massively scalable; its technological infrastructure includes a robust cloud database that can handle a huge number of users, and a web platform built to handle future growth components such as language versioning, content regionalization by location, and more. Our scaling plans are primarily directed towards (1) partnering with major global partners (eg. corporations) and (2) adapting our technology to suit new scaling pathways (e.g. creation of mobile app).  

Progress indicators include:

*Participants (kids and family members) worldwide

*Participant hours

*Geographical reach (cities, countries, continents)

*Depth of our engagement in each region (communities participating; partnerships with school districts, teachers, other NGOs)

*Behaviour change related to specific UN Sustainable Development Goals; our target is that at least 70% of participating children take environmental “missions” home to their families, and that 50-80% of parents change behaviours as a result (driving less, conserving energy, saving water, reducing waste)

·      Participating kids who report improved well-being

We have more opportunities to grow our impact than we have capacity to pursue. Our most significant barrier is financial: we need funding to cover the costs of growing our team and adapting our technology, so that we can maximize the potential of emerging new partnership and scaling pathways.

OTHER BARRIERS

*COVID upheaval requiring ongoing adjustment of existing promotion and program delivery strategies

*Demands on teacher time (COVID, other teaching demands) limits the number of teachers who have time to do our programs with their students

HOW WE PLAN TO ADDRESS BARRIERS

*Hire new staff to take advantage of emergent impact growth opportunities

*Experimentation and adaptation of our tech to suit new contexts as we grow and work with new partners

*Expand our existing PPA suite (used by teachers) into a mobile app for kids/families, so we are no longer constrained to schools for delivery

*Grow our sales and fundraising capacity to support our future growth

HOW THE PRIZE WOULD HELP

*Injection of cash to support new hires to amplify our work

*Amplification of our promotional efforts to a worldwide network

*Access to mentorship around marketing, business development, capacity building

*Public recognition of our value; heightened profile with potential partners

Leveraging partnerships and networks to build new relationships and gain access to new markets and audiences has always been a key strategy for DreamRider (starting with the 1,200+ schools, school districts and municipal governments that have helped us promote our programs in their jurisdictions over the past 20 years, and continuing through other more global networks such as Ashoka Changemakers and SheEO). As an Elevate Prize winner, we would gain access to a whole new international network of like-minded innovators and activists, with huge potential for strategic partnerships, cross-promotion and general awareness-raising around our programs.

Owning my own leadership as a mixed-race woman has been key; I have learned to honour my non-traditional, non-colonial ways of being and doing, and have applied these values to DreamRider’s operations and systems. As an anti-racist activist, I’ve actively rejected white supremacy work culture norms, building instead a collaborative, kind, failure-resilient, inclusive company centered in love.

Recent outcomes:

*Board currently 65% women; soon 50% POC, operating in a non-colonial power-sharing model we call “evolutionary governance”

*Annual DEI learning requirements for all staff, with emphasis on embodied work

*75% visible minority applicants shortlisted in last hire; one hired

*Core staff team currently 75% women

*Diversity in programming; all programs feature a female superhero, Indigenous content, and diversity of representation in other characters, including race and ability. See participant testimonial: https://planetprotectoracademy.com/mia

FUTURE GOALS

*Centre BIPOC leadership; focus on hiring BIPOC for two upcoming leadership roles, and one junior position

*Deepen connections to the land and to Indigenous wisdom, through ongoing projects with long-term Indigenous partners

*Further increase diversity of representation in programming

*Operationalize our DEI commitment: work to dismantle biases and unquestioned norms so that as we grow, our systems become more earth-based and humane, not less.

In order to survive, we need a world-wide culture shift, one where citizens feel connected to the planet and to each other. The problem: change is hard for adults. Solution: activate the power of kids! Children aged 7-10 are just discovering their own agency, and starting to interact with the wider world. An experience at this age can influence their life’s trajectory (example testimonial: https://youtu.be/ZPg9rpfeKLI). Research also shows that children can deeply impact their parents’ environmental habits. If we reach kids at this liminal moment, they will drive the change that the world needs.

One of my key capacities is that I know what kids find fun, how to speak their language, how to engage them. For 20+ years and counting, my team and I have developed our methodology and designed our programs in collaboration with children, teachers and parents, through action research and a continual process of testing, receiving feedback, and iterating. We work with diverse communities to effectively engage kids of all ethnic backgrounds, abilities, orientations, gender identities and religions. We draw on our background as theatre artists to use story, music, and comedy to teach values such as collaboration, kindness, and interconnection with the earth.

I have a strong capacity to sense into the emergent future, by listening to all of the stakeholders in our work, sitting in nature with that, and waiting for solutions to emerge out of the silence. This was how DreamRider began to scale its impact by adding digital/online programming to our in-person offerings, more than a decade ago. When COVID-19 closed schools last spring, we already had a decade of practice at driving environmental behaviour change through digital means. We still had to adapt our delivery mechanisms, but within days we launched “Home Edition” versions of our PPA classroom programs, which we broadcast live via Zoom to kids in lockdown across Canada and the world.

A year later, in spite of being extremely well-received, the at-home programs were only reaching a fraction of our usual audience. I listened, and heard teachers and school administrators express a deep need for digital programs that would bring the entire student body together to counteract COVID-enforced separation. In twelve weeks, we created four new digital PPA assemblies, which have reached 17,000 kids this spring. We hear from teachers that children were fully engaged: moving their bodies, singing our songs and inspired to take action!

This 8-minute documentary about DreamRider was created just at the beginning of our digital journey, and focuses mostly on our theatre work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UjOoj0xC48

Limestone District School Board produced this “Learning in Limestone” segment about our Planet Protector Academy programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKZ0yJWneI

“Close Up” video series produced by Metro Vancouver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wajCoX_T1KQ (first 2 mins 50 seconds)

We have a scalable process that uses story, art and gamification in a digital medium, in a way that reliably turns children into planet-protecting changemakers in their families and communities: 90% of kids take their changemaking missions home. Really, the only barrier right now is money to hire more staff to take advantage of the opportunities arising every day. The funding will be used to hire 2 new staff for two years to communications and fundraising to support our upcoming sales and marketing hires, to increase our financial capacity and our ability to communicate our value with stakeholders. In the short term it will liberate us from other fundraising efforts for these roles so we can focus on building our team and capacity to do the world-changing work that we are ready to do.

We partner with municipalities and funders (e.g. the City of West Vancouver’s Engineering Dept., Emergency Preparedness BC) in specific cities or regions across Canada, because our programming (by design) dovetails with their community outreach and/or enviro-educational mandate. We leverage the community impact data we’ve collected for the PPA to demonstrate to municipalities how the program advances their environmental aims, encouraging city buy-in. Municipalities pay to license PPA programs and promote them to their local school boards; by the time the PPA reaches the school and classroom level, the program can be offered at no cost to participating schools or families. We also work closely with school district and non-profit partners to publicize the opportunity of free access to our programs to individual schools and teachers.

Other key partners include TSAG (First Nations Technical Services Advisory Group) in Alberta and IndigenEyez in British Columbia, who have both been integral consultants and collaborators in the development of the content highlighting Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on climate change that we have integrated into the PPA since 2017.