It makes a case from DreamSpace Academy’s own record, sets out the argument against it, and marks how well each claim is backed by evidence. For what the academy actually runs, the main pages are the description to rely on. This essay gives the reasoning behind them.
Education is how the ecosystem gets built
One of three essays on how the academy’s education and the rest of the organisation fit together.
In short. DreamSpace Academy describes itself as an Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builder: it helps a place grow the people, links and support that new ideas and businesses need. An organisation like that has to run education itself rather than buy it in. Section 5 sets out the five ways DreamSpace Academy does this.
Evidence marks. What happened comes from DreamSpace Academy’s own delivery record. What the organisation has decided comes from its written plans. Each claim carries a grade: 🟢 primary-sourced or corroborated across sources; 🟡 supported but partial; 🔴 asserted, and under validation.
Several figures below are recorded as what DreamSpace Academy states, not as independently checked counts.
1. Why an ecosystem builder runs education
People expect an ecosystem builder to bring people together, make introductions, run an incubator, find money for new businesses and put on a demo day. Running a robotics class for eleven-year-olds in a rural government school is not on that list. It looks like another organisation’s work.
DreamSpace Academy sees it the other way round. In an underserved community, education is the only part of the job that produces what everything else needs: people who will build. Every other part of the job assumes there are already founders, makers, trainers and delivery partners to work with. Where there are not, someone has to bring them through, and teaching is the only way to do that.
Two facts pull in opposite directions here. First, the shortage of such people is what holds the ecosystem back. Second, education on its own does not produce income. This is well evidenced, and DreamSpace Academy’s own written analysis says so. The academy accepts both.
2. What ecosystem theory says, and its limits
Researchers who study entrepreneurial ecosystems are open about the idea’s weak points. Its leading writers call the concept “under-developed and under-theorized”. The most common complaint is that the idea goes round in a circle: an ecosystem is whatever produces successful businesses, and wherever there are successful businesses there must be a good ecosystem [Stam 2015; Stam & van de Ven 2021]. A review of 181 studies found that many use the term “in name only” [Wurth et al. 2023].
The review of entrepreneurial ecosystem sets out the full definition and its limits.
Two points from that research hold up despite the criticism, and both explain why an ecosystem builder should teach.
The parts only matter when they work together. Isenberg, who first set out the idea in 2010, says that leadership, culture, capital markets and customers are “in isolation… conducive to entrepreneurship but insufficient to sustain it. That’s where many governmental efforts go wrong: they address only one or two elements.” So a list of the universities, mentors, investors and events in a place does not show that an ecosystem exists.
Entrepreneurs build the system as well as coming out of it [Stam 2015]. This puts education at the centre. If people build the system, then having enough of them is something needed at the start, not a result counted at the end. Where the ecosystem is missing, those people are missing too.
The research also carries a warning that governments often ignore: stop copying Silicon Valley. Reviews find that governments commonly copy a model from a successful ecosystem elsewhere without asking whether it fits local conditions [Spigel 2017; Brown & Mawson 2019]. An accelerator in a district with no founders has nobody to accelerate. The problem there is a shortage of people, and education is how that shortage is filled.
3. The constraint DreamSpace Academy found: identifying changemakers
DreamSpace Academy recorded this constraint in its own operations:
DreamSpace Academy’s hardest constraint was never the labs, the funding or the curriculum. It was identifying changemakers. (DreamSpace Academy’s own specification of the venture pathway)
Reaching people was not the hard part. Anyone could apply, and many did. Field visits, open calls for applications and DreamSpace Academy’s own bootcamps brought in large numbers, and most of the changemakers on record arrived that way. One open call in October 2022 ran across four districts and drew 360 applications, of which 30 were selected through district workshops and one-to-one interviews 🟢.
The hard part was that the old approach waited for people who were already motivated to come forward. Such people are rare, and finding them cannot be planned or grown. The supply is unpredictable and tiring to keep up: every search has to be run again the next year, from zero.
So DreamSpace Academy changed its approach:
Co-creation changes the supply from found to built. The Changemaker Journey (Explorer, Maker, Innovator, Changemaker) develops the motivation rather than screening for people who arrive with it. “Converts discovery from a search problem into a delivery problem.” (DreamSpace Academy’s own specification of the venture pathway)
A search has no schedule, and nobody knows how many people it will find. Teaching has a curriculum, a timetable, a cohort (a group that starts and finishes together) and a rate that can be measured. Education is what lets an ecosystem builder make that change. Nothing else on the usual ecosystem-builder list does.
4. The main argument against: education does not produce income
The strongest objection to this argument is “education does not produce livelihoods, and the data says so.”
The data does say so. DreamSpace Academy’s own analysis of why young people in these regions struggle to earn rests on these national statistics:
- Unemployment rises with education in Sri Lanka: 0.7% at Grade 5 and below, 3.4% at Grades 6 to 10, 6.0% at O/L, 8.0% at A/L and above, and the gradient holds in every province 🟢.
- 67.6% of Sri Lanka’s unemployed are already computer literate, 75.5% of those aged 20 to 24, 81.2% of those aged 25 to 29 🟢.
Two out of three unemployed Sri Lankans can already use a computer. Any theory of change whose mechanism is “teach underserved young people ICT and they will get work” is already refuted by the national statistics. (DreamSpace Academy’s root-cause analysis)
Studies of training programmes reach the same answer from the other side. Training on its own does little or nothing for income, and what it does often fades:
- only about 29% of short-term earnings estimates are positive;
- a review of 37 evaluations finds “no immediate translation into business set-up or increased income”;
- the most careful randomised trials of skills training show the effects fading by 12 to 15 months 🟢.
Training plus something else is a different matter. A job referral raised earnings by 40% where training alone did nothing. Programmes that combined several kinds of help produced gains that lasted, across six countries. In post-conflict Uganda, cash plus training plus supervision doubled incomes 🟢. Peer-reviewed research on FabLabs (shared workshops with digital making tools) finds that making builds some entrepreneurial skills, and needs dedicated programmes and business support on top 🟢.
The academy calls these extra inputs couplings: the money, access to buyers, introductions and continued support that turn a skill into a livelihood. Its analysis concludes that what breaks the link between skill and income is the lack of these couplings, not a lack of training.
DreamSpace Academy’s position is therefore narrower than “education works”:
Education is the mechanism that produces builders. It is not the mechanism that produces income. An organisation that teaches without the couplings will watch the gains decay on a schedule the literature can already predict.
This is why the teaching sits inside an ecosystem builder rather than inside a school. A school can offer only the first half. DreamSpace Academy’s education depends on what comes with it: the labs, the bridging into partners’ work, the seed money, the mentors and contact that lasts for years.
Several of these exist today:
- an impact-loan fund and co-founding of ventures, both held by DreamSpace (Pvt) Ltd rather than the Academy;
- bridging and access to buyers;
- contact that lasts for years.
But they have never been put together as one planned package, or measured as one. The academy’s own planning documents list this as a gap.
5. How DreamSpace Academy uses education to build the ecosystem
The record shows five separate ways the teaching builds the ecosystem. Lumped together as “programmes”, they look like a training centre. Taken one at a time, each one builds a different part of the ecosystem.
① Empowerment Inside School: the school programme
Empowerment Inside School (EIS) is DreamSpace Academy’s main programme inside schools. It teaches ICT that follows the Sri Lankan government syllabus, plus Robotics & STEAM, at no charge to underserved schools. It is planned to stay with the same pupils for six years, from Grade 6 to Grade 11. Pupils learn by working on challenges rather than by memorising.
The programme follows a written procedure with 13 phases 🟢. The main steps are:
- choosing schools that have no ICT teacher, no computer lab, low O/L ICT results, rural or marginalised;
- getting Zonal Education Department approval;
- testing pupils at the start, so there is a baseline;
- teaching;
- testing again at the end and comparing with the start;
- closing, which trains teachers and leaves a student ICT club behind.
The figures here come from the programme’s written reports, not from counting rows in spreadsheets, which overstates reach:
- Batticaloa pilot, July to December 2025, 5 schools: “Reached 194 students across Grades 6–9”;
- Hatton, across Dickoya and Ireby, late 2025: 306 students;
- four Nuwara Eliya schools, April to May 2026: 114 students, 13 sessions, 21 projects 🟢.
The concept report’s “616 students across 9 schools in 3 regions” is a planning target that includes Mullaitivu, where the programme has not started. It is a plan, not delivered reach.
② The Changemaker Journey: where it runs, including the MakerSpace
The STEAM programmes are one part of what DreamSpace Academy teaches. The academy also runs business and entrepreneurship trainings, digital security training, and workplace and teacher training.
The Changemaker Journey is the path learners follow in the STEAM programmes. It can run in schools, at partner sites, online and in the academy’s own spaces.
MakerSpace by DreamSpace Academy is something narrower. It is a design for a physical space (the equipment list and layout) plus a standard for running it. It is built to be copied and franchised in a space that a local partner provides, and it is one of the places the journey can run. It is not the organisation itself, and the academy’s education does not depend on it.
So far the delivery record covers several curriculum tracks and the academy’s own bootcamps 🟢:
- seven numbered robotics batches, two of which split into two groups running side by side;
- a music programme in three batches, with graded exams in two languages;
- AI & Electronics with Scratch;
- Make & Play;
- a programme preparing students for university;
- monthly one-day workshops with prepared agendas and slides.
The essay How DreamSpace Teaches covers the teaching method.
DreamSpace Academy runs no lab units. Software, media and music work is done by groups of people who share a craft and learn from each other, not by standing units. Any published list of eleven labs is a historical record, not a description of the present.
③ Devolved delivery: local bodies run school clusters
DreamSpace Academy does not deliver every EIS cluster itself. It hands clusters to local bodies that employ their own staff:
| Body | What it runs | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Kathira Greens | the Vakarai, Kalkudah EIS cluster (3 schools) | director testimony, 2026-08-05 🟢 |
| Inverta | the Kantale cluster (5 schools), employing its own trainers | director testimony, 2026-08-05 🟢 |
| Eegai | incubated 2021, now the EIS managing organisation for Trincomalee | DreamShot cohort record 🟡 |
| Thiru & team | Hatton estate schools | director testimony, 2026-08-05 🟢 |
Through the school programme, local organisations gain a contract to run, staff to pay and a reason to exist. A changemaker who came through the academy’s pathway founded Kathira Greens. The teaching produced the founder, and then produced the founder’s contract.
④ Bridging: placing local people in partners’ programmes
DreamSpace Academy states that bridging is what it adds that others do not. Bridging is not teaching. The academy knows the region and its people, which an international programme cannot buy, and bridging turns that local network into work for local people.
The clearest example is in the director’s own words: “IREX wanted to spread its media-literacy programme across Sri Lanka and they didn’t have a good partner, DreamSpace Academy brought them to the Central and the North… I introduced Ladhushan and Donald as trainers for their training programme”, and they trained about 60 people 🟢.
The record shows four kinds of bridging:
- placement: putting individuals into a funder’s programme as paid trainers;
- devolution: handing school clusters to local bodies (③ above);
- convening: a partner’s premises and reputation host a DreamSpace Academy event;
- exposure: DreamSpace Academy uses its international standing to put its own people on a stage.
What the record does not show is money. There is no evidence of trainer day rates, EIS cluster terms or what DreamSpace Academy earned as the go-between. Bridging is not a revenue model. It is a way of delivering work, and how it is paid for has not been recorded.
⑤ Alumni: returning as teachers and directors
Alumni now lead much of the software, media and music work, and two are directors 🟢. When DreamSpace Academy took its approach to Erode, Tamil Nadu, it was “delivered by two people who are themselves products of the pathway”. A large share of the people who teach for DreamSpace Academy came through DreamSpace Academy.
The limit, as the academy itself records it: these are Batticaloa-trained people travelling to a new place. That is not yet evidence that a new site can grow its own teachers. The one test of that failed. DreamSpace Mullaitivu closed because nobody took over from the person running it: that person could not continue, no successor with the interest was found, and the search looked only locally. Funding, day-to-day running and skills were not the cause. Any claim that the approach can be copied to new places has to include the site that closed, and this one does.
6. Sri Lanka’s school reform and the gap in rural schools
Sri Lanka’s curriculum reform makes ICT and “Entrepreneurship & Financial Literacy” compulsory essential subjects in Grades 6 to 9 for the first time. It phases in from 2026 and covers all four grades by 2029 🟢.
The means to teach them were never built:
- 19% of type 2 and type 3 schools have IT labs, against 72% of top-tier schools 🟢. (Type 2 and 3 are the smaller government schools that do not teach up to A/L.)
- In the technology stream there are 35.3 students per teacher, against an average of 12.8 🟢.
- At home, 1.5% of estate households own a computer, and 92.6% of estate internet access is by smartphone alone.
A phone is not enough to learn CAD, coding or a laser cutter.
The government’s STEM reform shows there is demand for this work. The state has promised something it cannot yet deliver in rural schools. That gives the academy a place as a partner that supports the state system and feeds into it, not as a rival.
Whether that place can be made formal (an MoU, a provincial agreement, recognition as a delivery partner) is still an open question. The need is proven. DreamSpace Academy’s formal right to act on it is not. What exists today is narrower: written Zonal Education Office approvals in three zones (Batticaloa, Kantale, Nuwara Eliya).
National policy makes a related point in its own words: Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem is “confined to the urban areas especially Colombo”, and “decentralizing support infrastructure” is named as a national policy priority. DreamSpace Academy’s work carries out that priority.
7. BOOKBRIDGE: an education programme that produced an organisation
DreamSpace Academy began in BOOKBRIDGE’s 11th Capability Program in 2018. The programme had four modules, ran for about six months and ended with a pitch to investors. As BOOKBRIDGE publishes it, each centre is set up as a social enterprise run by a local entrepreneur, paid for by a soft loan (a loan on easy terms) that is repaid from the centre’s own trading income 🟢.
So an education programme produced an organisation: DreamSpace Academy itself. That happened seven years before the academy put this idea in writing.
Whose loan it was, whether it was repaid, and how much it was are not confirmed. This story is also not an argument against grants.
DreamSpace Academy is funded from three sources: grants and partnerships, revenue it earns itself, and the founders’ own capital. How much each one contributes has never been measured. The academy is not trying to become independent of grants. It is building work that keeps running after the grant that paid for it stops.
8. What DreamSpace Academy does not claim
The argument above explains why an ecosystem builder should teach. It does not claim that DreamSpace Academy’s ecosystem has yet produced what it aims at.
- Nobody knows yet how many learners become Changemakers. There is no count yet of how many people start the pathway, so there is nothing to compare the Changemakers against. Until there is, nothing can be said about how well the pathway works as a whole, only that each part of it is backed by evidence. 🔴
- “Earn” is a hypothesis being tested, not a result. That a skilled maker can sell things they have made for a small income is near-term and low-risk 🟡. That this becomes a lasting livelihood at a reliable rate, in this place, through this pathway, has not been measured 🔴. No figure for jobs created exists, and none is published.
- What the ecosystem has produced is mostly unmeasured. The description Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builder rests on what DreamSpace Academy has built, not yet on what the ecosystem has produced.
- Every reported outcome comes from people who finished. In a trainer’s own words: “The most important feedback is from the students who stopped attending. We currently do not know why they left.” 🟢 So nobody can work out how many learners stay, and every success figure leaves out the people who dropped out.
- Figures the academy reports about itself are recorded as “DreamSpace Academy states”, never as independently checked counts. Group totals have never been checked for the same person being counted twice.
The strategic task, in the words of DreamSpace Academy’s own audit: “not to become something new. It is to say, accurately, what it already is, and then to fund and measure that thing on purpose.”
9. Summary of the argument
Entrepreneurs build an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem as well as filling it. In a community where those people are not already there, an ecosystem builder has two options: wait for them to appear, or bring them through.
Waiting is a search with no schedule and no promised result. DreamSpace Academy did that for years and named it as its hardest problem. Bringing people through is teaching, with a curriculum, a cohort and a rate that can be measured.
The evidence also shows that teaching alone does not produce income. So the teaching has to be joined to labs, bridges into partners’ work, money and contact that lasts for years, not just to a certificate. Those links are the ecosystem, and education brings it the people.
A note on sources
This essay draws on DreamSpace Academy’s own record (the delivery and asset inventories, the case studies, director testimony and the funder history) together with its written plans: its description of who it is, its analysis of why young people struggle to earn, its theory of change, the DreamSpace Lifecycle and the incubation model.
National statistics resolve to their publishers: the Department of Census and Statistics Labour Force Survey 2023 and Computer Literacy Bulletin 2024, UNDP and OPHI district profiles 2023, the World Bank Sri Lanka Development Update (October 2024), and the WIPO Global Innovation Index 2025. Intervention evidence is cited to the published studies named in the text; the full list is on the references page.
Some figures that circulate near this material are refuted, the “90% franchise versus 30% startup survival” statistic and a branded “Five Stages of Scale” among them. Neither appears here.
A third party restating DreamSpace Academy’s own wording is not independent evidence. Partner pages, directories, award listings and news items quoting the organisation are restatements of the source, not observations of it, and nothing here treats one as corroboration.