Minutes of the Saturday, June 03, 2006 chapter meeting.
(Minutes by Ravi.)

Present:

Amrish, Dileep, Kumar, Hansa, Sridhar, Ravi, Kavitha, Jalpa

1. Workshop on Rights: Proposed June 10th Workshop on Rights, and 
Sandeep's visit was discussed. Hansa briefed about the preparations. 
Details of the workshop topics will be distributed later. Expenses will 
by borne by the participants.

2. Update on Asha marathon: Sridhar updated about the Asha marathon. So 
far Asha Princeton has 14 runners. The need for an assistant coach and 
the expenses for this purpose were discussed. Chapter agreed to foot one 
third of the fees to be paid to the assistant coach, which is anything 
between $400 and $500. This will be part of the marathon program 
expenses. Sridhar with the help of Ananya created the website for Asha 
Princeton marathon team that explains about the program and provides 
useful information to the participants/ volunteers/ supporters. Chapter 
thanked Sridhar and Ananya for their efforts.

3. Presentation on Sanctuary conference by Hansa – Hansa made a 
presentation on the Sanctuary conference held at Kolkota in Jan 2006 (for 
more information visit 
http://www.ashanet.org/focusgroups/sanctuary/sanctuary2/index.htm). The 
focus of the conference was children at risk. Hansa briefed about the 
conference, and shared her experiences and observations. Nearly 20 NGO 
groups from all over India who are working in the area participated. 
Chapter recognized and appreciated good work done by Hansa as part of the 
Sanctuary Focus group. Asha for Education has been involved in the 
efforts of helping/supporting the children at disadvantage using various 
means. It was natural for Asha to support Sanctuary conference. Asha 
Seattle supported the expenses for the conference. As part of the next 
steps, a need was identified to train/provide support to the social 
workers to better handle children at risk under different circumstances. 
Hansa proposed to hold two workshops in India for this purpose at a cost 
of $400-$450 per workshop. The chapter agreed to support this effort, and 
requested Hansa to provide the details.

4. WAH update – Dileep provided update on the WAH projects. Out of 12 
projects submitted, so far 4 were reviewed. Weekly conference meetings 
are being held for this purpose.

5. Using Google groups – Google groups seem to offer thread mechanism for 
discussions. It was agreed to try Google groups for discussions on 
topics, and continue to use Yahoo groups for general communication.

Ravi