*Neha María D’ Souza, Fellow (2025-2026)*

The first drawing was of me with long blue hair and pink eyes. Across the top, in bright letters: "Te amo Neha." It came from one of the Montessori students I met through my work at the DREAM Project. I told her I loved it. The next time I saw her, she handed me another. Then another. Soon, almost every time our paths crossed, there was a new drawing waiting in her hands.

I didn't know then that, a year later, those drawings would be coming with me to London.

When I arrived in the Dominican Republic, I had a job to do. As a Marketing and Communications Fellow, I would write stories, take photographs, create social media content, and help share DREAM's work with the world. I was excited to apply something I loved - storytelling - in a place where there was so much worth telling.

But a fellowship is difficult to contain within a job description. Over the year, I moved between classrooms and community events, behind a camera and in front of one: writing, filming, teaching, learning, and, increasingly, listening. I began the year looking for stories to tell. I ended it paying closer attention to the people who were living them.

I loved watching our TikTok account grow. It was my little project, one I had the privilege of building, experimenting with, and watching it find its audience. I got to document people across the DREAM community and share their stories beyond the walls where they happened. Seeing that content land on the feeds of my friends and family was especially meaningful. A video could begin in a classroom in Cabarete and, within hours, reach someone's phone on the other side of the world. It reminded me that storytelling can make a place feel tangible, even from thousands of miles away.

And sometimes, the best thing I could do with my camera was put it down. At the Ferias de Libros, I spent the beginning of the event taking the photographs I had come for. Once I had them, I started talking to the students and teachers instead. I learned that there is a difference between witnessing a place and living in it, between collecting a photograph and collecting a memory. Some moments were simply better experienced than documented.

Many of my favorite memories weren't moments of achievement at all. They were lunch breaks with my coworkers: sitting around a table talking about movies, our lives, or whatever had happened that morning. We debated. We laughed. We ate Dominican food, and unfamiliar dishes became favorites: la bandera, tres golpes, meals I didn't realize I'd miss until now.

My coworkers taught me Dominican expressions and customs, but gave me far more than vocabulary. Over lunch, we talked about our hopes for the world and for ourselves, our careers and uncertainties, serious things and completely unimportant things. Somewhere in those ordinary conversations, the people I had met as coworkers became friends. I began recognizing people around Callejón and Cabarete, and saying hello. I knew the names and personalities of the students in my A Ganar English class, and of the Montessori kids I'd met along the way. Faces that had once been strangers became familiar.

When I first arrived, I counted the days. The beginning was harder than I expected: words slipped past me before I could catch them, and even a trip to the grocery store took twice as long and felt half as certain. For a while, I measured my time in the DR by how much of it was left. Then, somewhere along the way, I stopped counting and started paying attention instead.

At my farewell dinner, the Cabarete sky turned pink, and the clouds above us formed what looked like a heart. My coworkers cried. I cried. We hugged, laughed, and tried to say goodbye, though it felt more like *see you again* than goodbye. Looking around that table, I realized how strange it was that, a year earlier, none of these people had known me. Now they were people I wanted to see happy and thriving, people whose potential I believed in as fiercely as they believed in mine.
I had spent a year telling DREAM's stories. Somewhere along the way, I became part of one.

Now I'm beginning another chapter in London: a new home, new colleagues, new stories to live. On my wall will be the drawings from mis amiguitos, letters from coworkers who became my Cabarete family, and the Dominican flag from someone who'd become one of my closest friends.

But what I'm taking with me isn't just what can be hung on a wall. It's the confidence to walk into an unfamiliar room and find my place in it. The patience to listen before trying to understand. And the willingness to show up, in whatever way I can, and do my part.

I came to DREAM to contribute what I could. I left having received more than I knew how to ask for. And that's the story I'm taking with me.