From:  [21]sshanmuga@h...
   Date:  Wed Jun 20, 2001  3:09 am
   Subject:  Re: Minutes of meeting held on Saturday, June 16

   
   dear  amrish,  i  think we need someone to take minutes as the meeting
   proceeds
   instead of writing it up later.
   a couple of corrections to the minutes inline.
   shanmuga
   [22]akgarg@l... wrote
   Dear friends,
   Here are the minutes of the meeting of our chapter held on June 16.
   In attendance were:
   Vikas,  Asha,  Dilip,  Sujatha,  Shashi,  Giri, Roopa, Shahana, Diana,
   Pradeep,
   Ashvin,  Sumathi,  Vinay, Shankar, Amrish, Payal, Shanmuga and SANDEEP
   PANDEY
   (one  of  the  founders  of  Asha  whom most of us had the pleasure of
   meeting for
   the first time).
   First  Shanmuga  presented the highlights of the Asha-India Conference
   held in
   Chengalpattu, Tamilnadu from Dec. 28 to 30, 2000.
   The   Conference   drew   about   120  people  representing  about  75
   organizations.
   The presentations were in English and Hindi. Allowing the use of other
   languages would have been desirable but impractical. The participants
   exchanged viewpoints and got an opportunity to network.
   ## people were allowed to talk in all languages - tamil, karnataka,
   bengali, etc. translations were provided in hindi and english.
   One  of the items discussed at the Conference was the choice of metric
   to
   measure  success.  Was  the quantitative approach adopted by Universal
   Primary
   Education (UPE)/literacy projects the right answer? Or, was a softer
   qualitative approach needed?
   Dalit issues were presented by Dalit groups.
   The  continuing  practice  of  corporal  punishment in the educational
   system was
   examined.  (We  at  Asha-Princeton need to decide if we want to take a
   stand
   regarding it in the projects being funded by us).
   After  the  Conference,  Asha  volunteers  met  on  January 1, 2001 to
   discuss if
   Asha-India and Asha-USA were going in different directions.
   # the jan 1st meeting was meant for discussing many things, mainly
   issues relevant to asha-india volunteers. the above was also discussed
   with the few asha-usa volunteers present. this got highlighted
   on saturday because of the ashaprinceton's interests in this !
   In  answer  to  a  question  by Diana, Shanmuga described the Timbaktu
   project in
   AP.
   The  next  item on the agenda was to be a post-mortem of the Surbahaar
   event led
   by  Giri.  By popular consent, this topic was postponed in favor of an
   impromptu
   talk by Sandeep on the Asha Conference held at Berkeley last month to
   commemorate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Asha.
   The keynote was given by T. Sainath. Many issues were identified and
   discussed. For example, the extent to which Asha should work with the
   Government.  In  this  context,  Sandeep  mentioned that some new text
   books being
   prepared  under  the  auspices  of  NCERT  are  retrogressive in their
   content.
   Another  item  was  how  to  properly  utilize the funds that Asha-USA
   chapters have
   generated.
   There is an emerging view among the volunteers that there is room for
   differing  views within Asha. Sandeep and others feel that in order to
   be truly
   meaningful,  the projects supported by Asha have to tackle issues that
   go beyond
   just education (e.g. healthcare).
   Sandeep also mentioned that the Asha Centers in India would welcome
   short-term and extended visits/stays by volunteers, students and
   researchers.
   Even  though  the  discussion  on  the  Surbahaar  was  postponed,  we
   celebrated the
   success of the event by feasting on Gulabjamuns brought by Sumathi and
   Vinay.
   Thanks.
   Amrish