Dream Believe & Achieve
Our full-spectrum Schools, Prisons, and beyond. Leveraging lived-experience to build futures, provide mentoring, and drive true rehabilitation across society.
Our Mission & Programs
Addressing the systemic friction by providing lived-experience mentoring, navigating the complexities of the criminal justice system and educational environments.
The Evolve Program
Therapeutic baseline and cognitive-behavioral development for youths at risk of exploitation.
Stepping Stones 4 Success
Our flagship prison/probation course designed to increase confidence, awareness, and positivity.
Resilience & Wellbeing
Brief interventions and long-term resilience building for minds navigating intense societal pressures.
County Lines Awareness
Number one provider for talks on County Lines, educating both vulnerable youths and police forces.
CSCS Pathways
Vocational credentialing coupled with guaranteed job placement within the construction sector.
Mentoring Qualification
Our in-house ASDAN-accredited mentoring course training individuals to become qualified peer mentors.
Where We Work
Three pillars, one pipeline — from custody, through the classroom, to the front line of policing.
Prisons
Addressing systemic friction and preparing inmates for societal reintegration through lived-experience support and functional skills training.
Within the custodial and probation sectors, our flagship provision is the "Stepping Stones 4 Success" program. The main objective of this course is to increase confidence, awareness, and positivity for individuals who may not initially see what they can achieve in their future.
Through highly interactive modules covering Personal Development, Healthy Lifestyles, Social Action, Employability, and Budgeting, we focus on revisiting and retraining vital life skills. We help participants eradicate the fear of failure, teaching them that "FAIL" simply means their "First Attempt In Learning". This approach successfully steers individuals away from a Fixed Mindset and helps them embrace a Growth Mindset.
Alongside this core curriculum, we provide our in-house, ASDAN-accredited mentoring qualification, empowering inmates to become peer leaders. To ensure economic stability upon release, we also facilitate a CSCS-accredited pathway that directly connects individuals with guaranteed jobs in the construction world.
Schools
Early youth intervention to disrupt the criminal justice pipeline. Specializing in knife crime awareness and behavioral stabilization.
We are widely recognized as the number one provider for educational talks on County Lines and urban violence. Operating as gang workers and mentors with authentic lived experience, we deliver intensive early interventions designed to disrupt the criminal justice pipeline.
Our school provisions tackle critical, real-world topics, including County Lines awareness, the realities of knife crime, the detrimental effects of social media platforms, personal safety, and the legal implications of joint enterprise.
To ensure comprehensive support, we also offer our "Resilience and Wellbeing" workshop. Facilitated by our qualified partner, Katie, this 4-pillared program is highly rated in schools and care homes for actively supporting mental health and building long-term resilience without the use of medication. Furthermore, our Neurodiversity lead, Dan, provides tailored cognitive adaptation and learning support for students navigating unique learning challenges.
Stepping Stones 4 Success — its main objective is to increase confidence, awareness and positivity to individuals participating in the course that may not see at the time of commencing their journey of what they can achieve in the future. It focuses on revisiting and retraining their life skills at the same time exploring and nurturing confidence, self-belief and harvesting a plan.
By attending the workshops each session focuses on a particular skill set where opportunities are offered for them to undertake and accept the challenges set. Life can be a scary place where uncertainty and a fear of failure and rejection stops many from achieving their goals and dreams. What we are ultimately seeking for is future generations of shining lights and role models.
The fear of getting situations wrong is not one to be feared but one to be learnt from and positives can always be found in times when it feels you are alone or not worthy. Every situation has a meaning which can be positively broken down and life lessons learnt. We will stumble at some point in our lives and our destination and vision becomes hazed but, in these scenario's, it is how we rebuild that shows our character.
We all need support and guidance and for the younger generations asking for help or surrounding themselves with positive role models can seem impossible. Our mentors and facilitators are on hand to offer ongoing support through extrinsic motivation as well as developing intrinsic motivation enabling them to see and reach their full potential.
The sessions increase awareness of an individual's strengths and allow opportunities to become visions. Weaknesses that they may focus on becoming strengths and threats eliminated and become realistic opportunities. FAIL and No become eradicated as fail is just an individual's FIRST ATTEMPT IN LEARNING and when told No it is a chance to reassess and realise that the negative stigma of the word is just a case of searching for life's NEXT OPPORTUNITY. Steering away from a Fixed Mindset and embracing a Growth Mindset.
Police Training
High-level victimology education for Metropolitan Police, bridging the communication gap between law enforcement and exploited youth.
To effectively combat modern criminal exploitation, law enforcement must understand the psychological mechanisms of street-level syndicates. We provide high-level victimology and "Social Awareness (County Lines)" training specifically designed for Metropolitan Police officers.
Our seminars highlight the exact techniques used to draw vulnerable individuals into illicit lifestyles, equipping officers with a profound, ground-level understanding of the grooming process. By leveraging our lived experience, we bridge the communication gap between law enforcement and deeply indoctrinated youth, facilitating a crucial cultural shift that helps officers identify non-obvious signs of trauma and coercion during initial street-level interactions.
Our Impact
Addressing the systemic friction by providing lived-experience mentoring, navigating the complexities of the criminal justice system and educational environments.
Instagram Grid
Real-time DBA posts and community engagement from @dba_project.
The C2C360 Pipeline
Visualizing the DBA connectedness roadmap in the C2C360 pipeline. Click a waypoint to follow the journey from custody to community.
01 — Inside: Stepping Stones 4 Success
Our flagship prison/probation course designed to increase confidence, awareness, and positivity. Through interactive modules covering Personal Development, Healthy Lifestyles, Social Action, Employability, and Budgeting, participants revisit and retrain vital life skills — steering away from a Fixed Mindset and embracing a Growth Mindset.
02 — Peer Mentoring Qualification
Our in-house ASDAN-accredited mentoring course trains individuals to become qualified peer mentors — turning people who have lived the experience into the next generation of role models inside the system.
03 — The Gate: C2C360 Handover
We partner with C2C360 to deliver end-to-end continuous case management bridging custody and the community. This collaboration focuses on eradicating the resettlement "cliff-edge," ensuring long-term stability and preventing reoffending the moment an individual steps outside the prison gates.
04 — CSCS Pathways to Work
Vocational credentialing coupled with guaranteed job placement within the construction sector — giving people leaving custody an immediate, funded route into stable employment.
05 — Community & Schools
Lived-experience mentors move into schools and communities as the number one provider for talks on County Lines, educating both vulnerable youths and police forces — closing the loop between prevention and rehabilitation.
About DBA
"If you can Dream it, you can Believe it. If you can believe it, you can achieve it."
At Dream Believe and Achieve (DBA), our philosophy is simple. We are a cooperative, united by our shared passion to invest in young minds and instil a profound sense of self-worth in every child, young adult, and adult we work with. Our core values of Dream, Believe, and Achieve empower individuals to realize their full potential and translate their aspirations into successful achievements through a holistic, wraparound support system.
The foundation of our enterprise is built upon providing unwavering support and mentoring through our specialized talks and courses, ensuring everyone is given the opportunity to be a valued part of society. Most importantly, our staff and facilitators all possess lived experiences; they have navigated these exact societal challenges, learned from them, and discovered the inner strength to positively change their lives.
Partners
Our success in mentoring and rehabilitation is amplified by a powerful network of collaborative partnerships, ensuring continuous support from custody to the community.
Andrew Pritchard is an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, consultant, and bestselling author whose life story is one of transformation, resilience, and redemption. Before founding the AP Foundation, Andrew built a successful career in the music and events industry, producing live music events and large-scale festivals across the UK.
However, behind the success was a double life that ultimately led to his downfall. Once involved in organised crime as a high-level drug smuggler, Andrew lived a lifestyle that came at a devastating personal cost — not only to himself, but to those closest to him. It was during his time serving sentences at HMP Belmarsh and other prisons that Andrew underwent a profound change.
Determined to rebuild his life with purpose, he became committed to helping young people and ex-offenders break free from cycles of crime, violence, and hopelessness. This led to the creation of the AP Foundation, a charity dedicated to supporting ex-offenders and at-risk youth through mentorship, intervention, and opportunity.
Today, Andrew serves as Executive Founder of the AP Foundation and is widely recognised for his work in rehabilitation, social impact, and criminal justice reform. Alongside his charity work, Andrew is a founding member and board steering committee representative for several corporate and community initiatives, including Constructure and Who's Next. He also works in partnership with the Home Office social media team and Communications Directorate as an official trusted voice.
Andrew's life journey is now used as a blueprint for rehabilitation programmes delivered in prisons across the country, while his bestselling autobiography, Empire of Dirt, has been included on recommended reading lists at colleges and universities for students studying criminology and criminal justice. Andrew's journey is not the path anyone expected him to take — but it has become a powerful example of how change, accountability, and purpose can transform a life.
Who's Next 2: DBA is a proud member of the "Who's Next?" campaign, a diverse coalition tackling the root causes of youth violence and knife crime across London. This multi-phase initiative utilizes a comprehensive, community-focused approach that prioritises education, engagement, and long-term prevention.
We partner with C2C360 to deliver end-to-end continuous case management bridging custody and the community. This collaboration focuses on eradicating the resettlement "cliff-edge," ensuring long-term stability and preventing reoffending the moment an individual steps outside the prison gates.