Reel Change Film Festival: "Water Awareness...Down the Drain"

This past weekend, on June 26th, we got to celebrate our first appearance on the big screen! 

"Water Awareness...Down the Drain", our first ever DreemTV documentary was accepted and premiered at the UCSC "Reel Change Film Festival" The intention of the film festival was to feature films, workshops, and art of social and environmental justice purposes, and it was a wonderful event!

We arrived and set up our booth - tapestries, banner, tables, pamphlets, sign up sheets, and displays ready to entice new Dreemers to join our team. Employing the assistance of "Free H20 for You" to bring thirsty folks relief and to honor our Water Awareness film, we engaged with curious stopper-byes. On the other side of our booth, we featured DreemGardens with a trifold and beautiful seedlings - there are always so many people interested in joining up with such a great community and family building opportunity! 

Oh! And we activated our "What is your Dreem" white board, encouraging people to write their Dreem in order to manifest it! Here is what the board had by the end of the night:

• Having a healthy baby
• No Monopolies
• A beautiful sustainable community
• Educate the youth
• Regenerative, sustainable, blissful loving communities - Globally!
• A world of love and awareness
• Forgetting personal satisfaction
• $
• Home gardens for everyone
• Harmony between people & nature
• Bicycles everywhere
• Have the planet touch & talk...
• A close family
• Free
• World Domination
• Being Dominated by the world
• A good successor for world domination
• World-Wide Dreeming

Of course we also took the opportunity to display the beautiful DreemArt that has been created from reclaimed and natural materials. Our Dreemers are so multi-talented and creative! 

 

The film premiered at 5:30pm and had some enthusiastic viewers! Thank you to those that came out for that - Daphne, Peter, Amber, Jonathan, and of course those that we don't already know! It felt so wonderful to have your support, as always! Oh, and a special thank you to Dreemer Jonathan for assisting us hold down the booth - you're always a pleasure to have around and to create with. 

And finally, we'd like to thank all those that helped create the film! Our film crew from the Digital Safari Academy (Nina, Winnie, Qua'Tasia, Brenda, and Randy), West County Wastewater District and Joe, our interviewees (Cate, Lynn, Carter, William, August, Melissa, Josh, Mike, Tom, Lucas, Sonya, Justin, Rhea, and Crystal), and of course our Master Editor Jason Raggio.

Keep an eye on our DreemTV youtube channel by subscribing! There are many more educational and motivational videos on their way.

(See the full slideshow of the day, here!)

Giovanna, our wonderful DreemScholar!

We are honored to highlight our first ever DreemScholar Giovanna Piumarta as she commences her 5 week adventure at Lost Valley Education Center in Dexter, Oregon from May 21 until June 22, 2012!

Several months ago, we met Giovanna at the Cabrillo College Permaculture Club - who is a dedicated member of this club even though she is not even a student there! We presented a recently established opportunity with Lost Valley to provide Dreemers with a discount for their 5 week, immersive Permaculture Design Certification class. She was immediately perked and interested in the collaboration, being that her mission in life is to promote environmental education to children focusing on "Greening" schools and getting kids in the garden. 

Our next meeting with her was to discuss and reconfirm interest in such a large time and financial commitment as this 5 week course would be. That was to be the first time of many Giovanna would impress us with her diligence, commitment, and enthusiastic involvement. Since then, she has proven to be one of the amazing Lead Volunteers for Dreem Reality and it's many blossoming projects, and we are truly blessed to have her on our DreemTeam!

Giovanna's presence can be seen (on DreemTV) through the entire history ofDreemGardens, not only as an avid hands-on volunteer but as a teacher - sharing her extensive knowledge in plants, gardening techniques, and uplifting spirit with her fellowDreemers. She has been an essential part of DreemGardens' growth, and such a perfect representative at Lost Valley! 

She has taken on the great role of scientist, student, and educator as she reports back to us about her experiences and lessons at Lost Valley. Additionally, she has eagerly taken on the EcoVillage Research Project to help us understand the effective techniques of operating and maintaining a community and education center. Furthermore, she has promised to come back to Santa Cruz and teach us what she has learned, as we transform herDreemGarden into a permaculture masterpiece!

Please follow along with Giovanna's adventure on our blog, here!

Ultimately, we could not have manifested a better DreemScholar to be our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts. 

Thank you so very much Giovanna for everything you have done, are doing, and will continue to create with us! 

We miss you!

Much love from your DreemFamily

Lost Valley PDC ~ A week one perspective...

Hello Dreemers!  

I’m writing to you from Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter Oregon, where I have spent the past week exploring the ecosystems here in the Western Cascades while attending a certification course on permacultural design. Since my arrival last Sunday, I have found Lost Valley, and the Meadowsong ecovillage to be warm and welcoming in spirit. Lost Valley defines itself as “a learning community creating catalysts for joyful ecological, social and economic regeneration,” and Meadowsong is the community in which this learning and regeneration takes place. The weather here has been cool, quite wet, and reminiscent of the Santa Cruz Mountains in January. Rain has paused my plan for camping in the meadow, but I look forward to moving outside when the sun returns…

The property that encloses the educational center and ecovillage contains a handful of cabins, yurts, camping sites, and a main lodge for dinning and social activities, as well as many gardens, orchards, creeks, ponds and hiking trails through forest land. With eight classmates, many residents, volunteers, and instructors living on-site, I am enjoying becoming a part of a close-knit community. I have met a truly amazing group of people, from all over the United States and outward to Mexico and Canada. All from different places and cultures, coming together with like-minds, looking for a place to learn and practice permaculture while building community...

During our first week of the course, we have come together to define permaculture, the focus of our gathering for the next five weeks, as this: permaculture is a malleable understanding of the revolutionary livelihood of working within the systems of a holistic network, while exercising sustainable living, creating unity with nature, and becoming abundant and dynamic forever. Or more simply stated: permaculture is the art and science of creating useable systems with which to produce the needs of humans without harming the environment around us. And with this definition, I am already finding that my educational experience here at Lost Valley is reaching far beyond the study of sustainable agricultural practices… 

 Much of our class discussion, activities and social interaction over the past week has reflected the need for a deeper understanding of the systems in which our earth and our societies operate, a deeper inner growth, required to fully understand the basic concepts of permaculture before moving forward to the hands-on practices. One fundamental and essential concept introduced this week is the difference between sustainability and resiliency. Sustainability being a system which can be maintained, and resiliency being a system which does not only maintain itself but also has the ability to withstand and recover from damage. Over the next weeks I look forward to deepening my understanding of sustainable and resilient systems while observing the world from a holistic viewpoint, taking into consideration the earth's natural patterns as well as the human perspective... 

Reaching beyond our permaculture curriculum, our course has spoken on the concept of power. Our power to move actively to reach our desires, to identify and become the change we wish to see in the world. Our power to overcome the fear of failure, with the transformation of fear into curiosity and excitement for the chance to be innovative and extraordinary. Everyday I am observing that change, like ideas, is spread from one person to another, and we need only start by being, by making decisions and actively living our lives in a way that we honestly believe they should be lived, for the betterment of all, and positive change will follow our light. A friend shared with me an opinion on the power of thought. He said to me that thoughts are like little burning embers, and the ones you stoke with thought and attention the most, are the ones that turn into true fires...


Sending love to friends, family, and Dreem Gardens, and looking forward to using our power of thought together, to manifest our own reality, toward a better tomorrow. 

Please feel free to share in my experience and check out more detailed pictures of my journey  along with my class notes at:  https://www.facebook.com/giovanna.piumarta under the photo section. 

Giovanna Piumarta 

DreemTV Notes: "A Bit About Composting"

Here are the notes that accompany the DreemTV Episode: "A Bit About Composting" done on May 6, 2012 and led by Megan.

Notes taken by Dreemer Natalie!

(Click on the photo to see full size)

"How to Build a Raised Bed" Notes (Accompanying Video)

These are the notes taken from our May 6, 2012 workshop on "How to Build a Raised Bed", led by Jonathan withFull Circle Creations, a local Sustainable Building Contractor. 

Notes were taken by our Dreemer Natalie, she wanted to make them pretty for you all!

Thanks Natalie!

View the DreemTV Episode on "How to Build a Raised Bed"

Whole Foods on board!

Whole Foods on board!05/04/2012   Back from my meeting at Whole Foods. Am brim-filled with excitement to share the story!                                           Adventures in Whole Foods I just got back home from my meeting with Melissa, the Marketing Team Leader at the Whole Foods Market in Capitola, Ca. The meeting was absolutely the establishment of an blossoming partnership between Dreem Reality and Whole Foods. But before I go into all of the exciting details, let me back up a bit. A week ago I wrote to Melissa to see if Whole Foods would be interested in donating food for our weekly DreemGarden events.  I talked to her of our blossoming non-profit and projects we are activating. My hopes were high, I felt confident that we would be able to get some food donated to us for our events since the Whole Foods in Berekely California was happy to do the same. My hopes, however, were unprepared for the amount of enthusiasm expressed back from my letter. Melissa wrote back the next day with a short and sweet message saying, “This looks very interesting! Do you have anytime to meet in person this week? Let me know, I would love to talk more about this.” Not what I was expecting! What I expected was the traditional “Well first you will need to fill out a donation request letter, give us your 501(c) 3 ID number and we will see what we can do.” No, this was different, this was an opening of doors and potentials. Let’s fast forward to the meeting with Melissa. We introduce ourselves to each other and share our excitement of meeting to communicate more. She asks of our organization and DreemGardens and I share with her the quick development that we have incurred since Earth Week April 16-21st. We move forward quickly throwing out ideas and potentials for growth with one another. She asks for a breakdown of our projects and budget, and lucky for me that I have a well organized Wife and Vice President of Dreem Reality, I had the paperwork for her immediately. She exclaimed, “Wow, look at you!”. After that she says we will need to fill out a donation request form, and I am also able to hand it over to her and receive another approving exclamation.  From there we talked about the big potentials together. Melissa says she thinks we would be great for their “Nickels for Non-profits” program that runs for 2 months at a time. This program gives a five-cent donation every time someone brings in a reusable bag, and for every bag that they bring. The customer then has a choice between two non-profit organizations to give their nickel(s) to. She recommended us funding our DreemTV project with this program. I asked about having an info card at the registers about DreemTV for the customers, she agreed that having some sort of pamphlet or card up there would be a good thing. She asked about our educational videos and if they would cost anything. It felt so good to resoundingly answer, “They will be absolutely free to the public”. She was very happy about that and thinks the project will progress forward well. I put out there that it would be great to set up a booth once a week at the Whole Foods site to talk to customers about us being there as a non-profit and what we are doing and providing for the public. We want to see about either making our own bike powered blender, or using People Powers blender to make some free smoothies for our patrons who stop by to say hi to our booth. I think this will be a hit. Then we talked about other Dreem ideas. We want to create a DreemCollective and establish our own currency of sorts amongst our Dreemers. We will be creating DreemCards for those who are working with our non-profit in different ways. These cards will have the Dreemers name and will say “I am a Dreemer”. They will then be able to go into a local business and receive a discount on goods. Whole Foods went a step further and put out there that they can give free coffee for our Dreemers with their cards! Yes!! Dreem Reality is currently in its first Spring FUNdraiser and I asked for reusable bags to be able to give to our donors for small donations.  We decided that 20 per week would be good and doable for them. Hooray for gifts for our donors! I shared more information on our DreemGardens project and inquired for the potentials of receiving food for our weekly events. She said that they could do snack type foods and goods for us. Yeah! While talking about DreemGardens we talked about the potential of creating an edible landscape outside of their building.  They are selling plant starts there now and we both thought it would be great to have some growing in their edible landscape to entice others to do the same. The only thing about this is that the landscape would need a daily up keep. This seemed initially as a problem, but on the way home I thought of how it could actually lead to many solutions! It would 1) Empower the community to create their own edible landscapes. 2) Which would lead them to purchasing some plant starts which are sold from Whole Foods. 3) It would help the economy by opening up a new job niche with them to hire a new Team Member for the upkeep of their edible garden. Perhaps even for one of our very own DreemGardeners! On that topic she mentioned in passing that they have to have their compost hauled away. I jumped on that thought and put out there that DreemGardens can come pick it up and disseminate it to our DreemGarden locations to proliferate the growing goods! Melissa shared with me a few schools who are starting gardens and that there is potentials there. One is Soquel Elementary and the other is Soquel High. This would be a great way for Dreem Reality to get into schools. She invited us to the Birthday Bash event on July 22nd. There will be lots of community and vendors there and she wants us to be one of them! We are very excited about this, as it will be another great way to get involved with our community and get more Dreemers on board for our growing projects. So, I am currently glowing with an overflowing energy of abundance and potential. Feeling very blessed to have been so well received by Melissa and Whole Foods, and am very much looking forward to the future collaboration and partnership that is rapidly blossoming. To cap off the event nicely, a man named Jon was sitting nearby as we were wrapping up the meeting and when I stayed behind to fill out the new paperwork for the “Nickels for Non-profits”. Jon told me that he said a prayer for me and our non-profits mission, that he feels that we will be successful. He recognized that I was wearing a turtle charm on my necklace and left me with a quote that his grandfather would share with him. “Like a turtle, you never get anywhere unless you stick your neck out.” Here’s to sticking my neck out, and getting somewhere filled with potential. Thanks Jon. Thanks Melissa. Thank you Whole Foods, and Thank You Life!! Dreems manifesting into Reality!