The Dream Tree Project on La Posta Road is housed in a former birthing clinic, and now that some of those babies were growing up, it was serving young people in need of counseling and support. The building had recently been donated to the group, and the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps was doing work to fix up the inside of the low-slung building. I pulled up shortly before an afternoon appointment, just as the co-founders were heading for lunch. Cami Hartman and Kim Treiber has been so engrossed in their work they had lost track of time, and we almost missed each other. They invited me along, so I jumped in their new 14-passenger van, also donated to the Dream Tree Project, and we headed toward a residential neighborhood to drop off a young worker. The previous weekend she had attended another digital storytelling training session that had just taken place in Taos. She said she liked it but had a hard time with the computers, so she let Peter, another student, do most of the work. From her house we headed to one of the New Mexican restaurants on the road out of town, where Cami and Kim talked about the MIRA project.

Dream Tree had been their project for several years, and they worked without pay, supporting themselves with income from music and making jewellry as they worked on getting the legal authority as well as physical resources to serve the kids with whom they had been helping. Kim said she had been planting flowers when Elton Loy asked if she had a cause around which a new MIRA team could be formed. She suggested Dream Tree, and from that time on they knew exactly what they would do. This was somewhat different from many teams, which met, deliberated, learned and then decided on a project acceptable to all the diverse members. For the Dream Tree project money was the goal. That's not to say they found the training unimportant. Cami mentioned the important input from other young people who helped the directors with ideas to make a teen center much more comfortable, fun, and welcoming to other young people. Frank Odasz, who did five training sessions in Taos was one of the more popular (and well known) trainers during the initial phase. He had good rapport with young people and provided many options for someone with a question about a technique, a web site, or a technology to pursue. The Dream Tree Project found his web design useful as a start, and they went on to produce one of the more sophisticated web designs of any of the MIRA teams.

On their own the founders have been able to leverage the $15,000 from MIRA was used in various ways. The office had needed a copy machine, and one company they called agreed to match their money, allowing them to buy a very nice machine for much lower cost. They seemed to have a magic touch, but it was clear they did not want to fall into the non-profit trap of spending more time on raising money and growing their organization instead of serving the young people. To avoid volunteer burnout they have told their board they want to pay their workers decently including benefits, but that is a project in the future.