Folks,
Following were the attendees of Saturday's(Aug 11)

meeting at Asha-Princeton: Anirban, Sandeep, Sanjeev,
Kumar, Shashi, Sumathi, Vinay, Madhav, Rohini, Amrish,

Rajesh, Shanmuga, Vijay, Pushpa, Sowmya and Ravi.
An annual review of the Nalamdana project was done

by Giridhar, preceded by a introduction by Vinay.
Items covered included a demographic profile of the 8
students currently supported by Asha-Princeton,
descriptions of 4 representative sample workshops
conducted for the Nalamdana scholars in
2000-01(Practical Summer English classes, Newsletter
preparation, Leadership Development and Narmada Bachao
Andolan(NBA)-awareness).
About 9 new scholars were added this year,
increasing their overall count from 31 to 34.(5
graduated last year from 12th grade, and 1 student
dropped out citing her grandfather as a newfound
source of economic support.
Following were some questions/answers related to
the project:
Q: Given Nalamdana's funds usage is less than
Asha-Princeton's funding amount, why did they not
select more students ?
A: Funds needed for conducting workshops and
English classes were overestimated. Moreover,
Nalamdana doesn't fix a target number of new students
for selection every year, instead, it uses its own
criteria to prune applicants.
Q: Are we sure Nalamdana doesn't control content
of workshop material ?
A: Absolutely. Content is at sole discretion of
the Workshop facilitators. Nalamdana office members
are just casual observers.
Q: Given that more Nalamdana scholars are
graduating towards college, does supporting their
college education conflict with Asha' mission ?
A: No. Asha's mission is meant more to serve as an

overall goal for volunteers to work towards, rather
than as a stifling restriction.
Q: When will Nalamdana give us a more detailed
breakup of costs and next year's budget ?
A: In a week-10 days. Release of funds for the
next year from Asha-Princeton is contingent on us
receiving satisfactory financials.
Following were some suggestions/made for
enhancement of the project.
1. Nalamdana should come up with non-academic
measures(i.e. NOT grades) to evaluate scholars'
overall development. A template with a set of
questions to be answered by parents is available and
was used in a prior Asha project as per Sandeep; we
will adapt it accordingly.
2. Research to be done on two organizations,
Foundation of Excellence and North-South Foundation,
to explore how Nalamdana can enlist their help in
securing funds for college-going scholars. This would
reduce their dependence on Asha-Princeton.
3. In keeping with the spirit of their newly
established Social Service award meant to encourage
students to contribute to their community, Nalamdana
should continue to motivate students' volunteerism.
4. To find out if Nalamdana can make optimal use
of their surplus funds for items such as bookshelves,
software etc. and if so, enable Asha-Princeton to
consider reduced support. Also, we should encourage
them to be as transparent with their financials as
possible.

Overall, it was felt that NGO's in India shroud
their operations in a veil of secrecy, especially
regarding financial matters. That Asha should work in
co-operation with NGOs to enable them to provide Asha
and our donors a minimal level of financial
transparency was clear.
Another new development: Through Rajesh's effort,
we found a donor who has donated a WinBook Laptop PC,
with Windows 98, Microsoft Office etc to the children
of Nalamdana. This laptop will be sent to Nalamdana
this month.

-Giri.