A chapter meeting was scheduled for Saturday, Sept 15 at 4.30pm in 
Equad building: 

The following was the agenda: 


1. Science on Wheels - concluding pending issues (collaboration with 
Austin) & finalization of the support 
2. Volunteer visits to Asha Projects/India - experiences 
3. Preparation/planning for Jersey Half-shore marathon. 
4. Chapter administration issues - web site, quorum & associated 
issues, project coordination/monitoring/progress reports, chapter 
elections, etc. 
Present: Ravi, Sowmya, Kavitha, Amrish, Shankar 
New : Priya Nallan, Prabhu 


1. Budget support for Science on Wheels project was discussed. This 
was continuation of previous conference call. The issue of continued 
support and sustainability came up. It was decided to indicate to the 
project partner about the significance of sustainability with 
community empowerment and participation. It was felt that matching 
grant concept be tried to develop local resources. This necessarily 
not be contributions from the end beneficiaries. There were 
suggestions for working with project partner on different ideas on 
this aspect. There was a proposal for renewing the project just like 
last year with $7000 Asha support + $1500 matching grant for $1500 
local fund raising. There was a suggestion in the meeting to increase 
the matching grant to $2000 keeping the base support at same level as 
last year i.e. $7000. Under this proposal, Asha would support $7000 
with a matching grant of $2000 for local fund raising of $2000. Asha 
support would be a maximum of $9000. The proposal to increase matching 
grant was agreed upon. The meeting also suggested that for matching 
grant, the local fund raising be taken up in such a way that it would 
be easy to measure the efforts of local fund raising. For 
collaboration between Asha Princeton and Asha Austin, it was suggested 
that the Princeton chapter coordinator communicate with Austin chapter 
explaining the Princeton decision on matching grant concept and 
seeking for collaboration by contributing $3000 to the Asha's 
commitment of $7000, and by identifying co-steward to the project. If 
Austin agrees to this proposal, the commitment from Princeton would be 
$4000 besides $2000 matching grant, and commitment from Austin would 
be $3000. 


2. Sharing of experiences of volunteer visits to Asha projects during 
India trips was postponed. 


3. Preparation for Jersey Half-shore marathon was proposed to be taken 
up offline. 


4. Chapter administration and issues - Ravi brought up issues faced in 
the organization/administration of the chapter due to low attendance 
and volunteer resource. The impact, especially, is on decision making 
process such as determination of quorum, etc. Ravi submitted a draft 
document (an extension of Asha 2.0 document on the expectations of an 
Asha volunteer) that can help come up with procedures that can help 
smoothen the organization of the chapter. Ravi proposed to setup a 
Google document so that all the volunteers can edit/recommend for 
further discussion and finalization. 


Additional item brought up for discussion: 


5. Sireesha fellowship disbursement issue: Sireesha fellowship was 
approved in Aug 18th chapter meeting in Indian rupees. This is causing 
issues in the disbursement of the money (due to fluctuating conversion 
rate), and leading to discrepancy of the amount displayed on the 
project page due to fixed old dollar conversion rate. In order to 
avoid these problems, Ravi proposed to convert the amount sanctioned 
to dollars. The proposal was agreed upon.  At Rs. 13000 per month the 
commitment per year is Rs. 156000. At the rate of Rs. 40 a dollar, the 
annual amount is $3900. It was suggested to round the dollar amount to 
$4000, and the meeting accepted the suggestion. The scholarship would 
start from September 2007 and the amount will be sent in single 
installment. 


Minutes posted by Ravi.