Subject: Minutes from Asha-Princeton meeting on 6/5/99
From: Asha Princeton@hotmail.com

Friends,

Following are the minutes from our meeting on 6/5/99. Attendees were Ashvin, Giridhar, Arun, Tim, Shoibal, Shankar, Sathyakama, Sai, Tara and Rohini.
Arun, Sridhar and Shanmuga related their impressions from the nationwide Asha conference that was held in Boston during the Memorial day weekend.
Some action-items for our chapter include:
- Pursuing fundraising ideas such as United Way, corporate
presentations, pursuing matching funds from companies.
- Fundraising for administrative expenses, such as organizing guest-lectures
- Results of our project review sessions (questions raised, answers
received from the NGO) on the web as part of project info.
- Organizing regular fundraising events.
- Mentoring new volunteers, involving them in our regular chapter activities and responsibilities.
- Increasing student involvement.

Dr. Parameshwara Rao gave a talk at Boston similar to the one he had delivered at Princeton a few weeks back. The three goals that have emerged from the discussions at the Asha-conference are
(1) Bringing democrary into action,
(2) Universal primary education,
(3) Building the spirit of volunteerism.
There will be two meetings towards the end of July in the west and east coast of the U.S. where these ideas will be discussed in further detail. If interested, please contact sridhar_desikan@hotmail.com

We took a vote on the next Asha-Secretary. Amy Bhatnagar secured 6 votes, Vivek Pai secured 3. (1 attendee abstained)

Tim updated us on the PSA on Asha-Princeton that is aired on the Anil-ki-Awaaz program each Saturday morning. There are some quality issues in that broadcase that need to be addressing. Also, there is a possibility of broadcasting another PSA as part of a different radio program which Tim plans to put together.

Sai presented an update and site-visit report on FODRA, the Non-Formal Education and Remedial Education Center in outskirts of Delhi. For more information on FODRA, please visit our webpage at www.ashanet.org/princeton and follow the link for Projects.
Volunteers have raised a few additional questions that will be related back to FODRA, but overall the responses from FODRA have been satisfactory. Funding for FODRA has been approved for the period of July 1999 - June 2000 in the amount of $2000 (8 attendees voted for, 2 abstained). It has been decided that funding will be sent in two equal installments and the second installment will be subject to the quality of feedback from project coordinators in India, assurance of basic functioning of the project by mid-term and a basic implementation report from FODRA.

Our next meeting will be on 6/19/99. The agenda will include voting on Work-An-Hour 1999 projects and a discussion on the Khajurdaha Project, West Bengal, that is completely funded by Asha-stars and will be coordinated from Asha-Princeton. Sridhar will send out the details on this project.
rohini