Minutes for the Asha Princeton Meeting held on 16th
Aug 2003, 4:30 to 7:15PM. - by Sumathi

Attendees: Atul, Jayanthi, Ravi, Chidambaram, Raj,
Shankar, Kumar, Vinay, Sumathi

For the first time in many years, the meeting today
was held NOT in #C207, but instead was in the
sprawling lawns of Princeton University! It was fun!  

Three new volunteers were welcomed – Raj, Jayanthi and
Atul, so also were the relatively new volunteers –
Chidambaram and Ravi. The older volunteers explained
to them the various projects in the chapter, our
activities and the functioning of Asha as a whole.

The new volunteers took up several tasks. Ravi
volunteered to be the co-project-coordinator for
Vasundhara and Atul volunteered to be the co-project
coordinator for the Aajgaon project. Ravi further
volunteered to help with the maintenance of our
chapter website. Raj volunteered to coordinate the
Kadai Aravi project. Chidambaram and Raj expressed
interest in contacting companies earlier on, by the
end of this year for sponsorships for next year’s
fundraiser.  

Agenda Items discussed: 
Kadai Aravi :
^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Shankar had presented this project in the chapter a
few weeks ago. Kadai Aravi is an effort to inculcate
reading habits among children, by making popular
stories easily available. The group requested us for
funds to produce 500 sets of stories to be distributed
freely among poor schools in Tamil Nadu. Each set
comprises of 100 stories picked from popular comics
such as “Amar Chitra Katha”. The novelty is in the
printing, with each story printed in color on a
laminated sheet, permitting rough and tough usage by
children. Eash set cost Rs. 600 to print. 

During that meeting, the chapter had unanimously
approved the project, but with two of our projects
already in Tamil Nadu, there was hesitation to
allocate more funds to the same state. Funding it
would undermine efforts to take up new projects in
less-covered states such as Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa
and eastern Indian states. 

Shankar had hence approached other chapters and
individuals, and had been able to secure enough funds
to publish 350 of the 500 sets requested. Kumar now
stepped in and volunteered to raise the requisite
funds and advised Shankar to let the Kadai Aravi
people know that we will support their project.  

Lalpur project update:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As you all know, our chapter is now involved with
Lalpur Ashram, the Asha Center at Lalpur, in the state
of Uttar Pradesh. Details of the project are at
http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=22
.  Asha Boston is also involved. Shankar is
coordinating from our chapter.

In a previous meeting, we approved $600 for the
partial funding for the fellowship of Ms. Paromita
Ukil, a full time volunteer at the Ashram. There were
several questions raised during that meeting, and
Shankar came back with answers to them after speaking
with Ms. Paromita. 

Particularly, Paromita contributes to the day-to-day
running of the ashram, teaching children the basics of
health and hygiene, women’s issues, arbitrating
domestic violence issues and other tasks. Further, she
helps Lakshminarayan (who takes charge of most of the
education component) design activities for children to
enable joyful learning. 

Sandeep and Mahesh who envisioned JeevanVidya, are
closely involved with the implementation.  

Our chapter coordinator Amrish is currently visiting
the Lalpur Ashram, during his trip to India.

Sumathi