Minutes of the Saturday, Jan 07, 2006 meeting and action items.
(Minutes by Ravi)

Present:

Asha: Kumar, Hetal, Ravinder, Kavitha, Sumathi, Vinay, Vikas, Ananya, Ravi
AID: Brunda, Ram
Guests: Anand Kagalkar, Aparna Abhyankar, Karan Chopra

1. 
Anand Kagalkar, a contact of Sumathi and a well wisher of Asha, made a 
presentation about affinity cards that Asha could think of for raising 
funds. Affinity cards are credit cards issued by non-profit organizations 
with the help of banks such as MBNA. The sponsoring organization gets 1% 
of the amount spent by the card holder. Since the program appeared 
promising, it was decided to explore it further by getting information 
from MBNA. Anand volunteered to help us further.

Action item: Ravi will obtain additional information from Anand and work 
on the next steps. 

2.
Aparna Abhyankar requested us to revisit her proposal on the fund raiser. 
Aparna along with one of the artists from RAAG, Karan Chopra (RAAG - 
Rutgers Asian A'capella Group), provided some details of their plan that 
includes holding the event in Rutgers. RAAG would hold the event and the 
proceeds would go to Asha Princeton. The event would be a mix of 
performances from RAAG, RUDE (Rutgers University Dhol Effect), RUBhangra, 
and some children. The net benefits may not exceed $1500. The ticket 
would be about $8 with a snack or dinner. The targeted audience is 
Rutgers students, local Indian community and parents of the performing 
children. The plan sounded like there is not much work to be done by 
Asha. 

Our past experience with this kind of events was reviewed. Kumar felt 
that this could be a publicity event rather than a fund raiser. Kumar and 
Ravi expressed concerns about the location as Asha CNJ is active in 
Rutgers. Karan expressed some logistical issues in moving the event off 
of Rutgers. It was decided to find out first CNJ's reaction to the event 
location and take it from there. 

Action items: Ravi will contact CNJ on the issue of location. The 
proposal will be reviewed in the next chapter meeting along with CNJ's 
input. 

3. Documentary film was not screened due to lack of time.

4. Next chapter meeting was set for Saturday, Jan 21, 2006.

Thanks.
Ravi.