How do you know that you don’t like the taste of oranges if you never tried one? Or if you didn’t even know that oranges existed?

When you enter the world, you have a theoretical full potential to learn anything. In the Netherlands the first 22 years of your life are devoted to learning. The first four years at home with your parents, the following 18 years school defines a large part of what you learn to have your role in society. In the image above the x-axis stands for time, the y-axis for full potential.

All the choices made for you and those you make, together with other context like location, character, social situation will directly influence the path your life will follow. And with every decision, consciously or unconsciously made, you throw something away. The more you choose, the more you loose. When you are older, that is okay since most of the time you could oversee the consequences, but when you are really young that is impossible. You simply do not know yet what life has to offer, and if you don’t know, how can you choose for something you don’t know the existence of?

A lot of initiatives are happening out there. New ones start daily and we applaud that. However, we believe that the approach we take makes it valuable. Actually, we proof that on a daily basis and have proven that in the field of education too. We are able to start things and get people and business started. To make the right connections between people and profit. We have proven and continuously proof to add value by what we do, what we know, connections we make. We’re not doing that. It’s who we are. We move from project to project in all kinds of fields, helping companies, (non-profit) organisations, platforms, schools, creative agencies, events and more. And this diversity strengthens us. We also know that as soon as we choose to solely chase after one project we will loose value and attractiveness. That counts not only for us. We believe everybody can add at his best if you are doing whatever you do best. Or how Jeff Jarvis phrased it: Do what you do best, and link to the rest. And that’s exactly what we do.

So in order to make Dreamschool a success, we should continue to do what we do best. That way we can add the most value. And that’s also what we have expperienced so far. The fact that we can map experiences from other projects onto the field of education, creates fresh views, new insights and new approaches. The fact that we are part of that society young people are educated for to take part in, makes a massive difference. We will never be educational specialists or teachers. We don’t even want to be that. If they do their best, we are ‘the rest’ where they can link to in order to facilitate what cannot be facilitated in school to help young people realising their dreams. We want to close or help closing the Dream Gap.

Changing schools, changing rules, changing legislation takes ages. Obviously we need change there. Meanwhile, Project Dreamschool helps closing the gap between the dreams people have, and the opportunities or educations people get offered. By facilitating a platform that enables people to learn to dream again, and when they can dream, to connect dream pursuers and dream helpers. By tools that help encourage sharing knowledge, information and network. By organizing moments where people can meet and exchange. And by doing this hope to build a long lasting place where everybody benefits. From CEO, to employee, to consumer, to student. Because at the end we are all just people with dreams and ideals. And not titles on business cards.