Minutes of Asha Seattle Meeting, May 6, 2004 Venue: Stevens Court Commons Participants: Arindam, Paramita, Raghav, Rahul, Ravi, Shailendra, Sri, Srijan, Sunil, Swati, Venky, Vibhavaree, Vinay. The agenda discussed were 1. Rahul formally made an announcement about the Asha West Conference to be held on the Memorial Day weekend (29, 30, 31^st May) and that online registration is open. 2. Rahul also talked about the Work an Hour (WAH) teleconferencing. The WAH funding for CMS-SAC is up for review on May 8^th at 8.30 am PDT. The process of WAH project discussion through teleconferencing was also discussed. Initially, individual project stewards present an overview followed by feedback and questions from each reviewer and other participants. Each such project review takes an average of 45min depending on the extent of steward-reviewer participation. There was an extensive discussion regarding such WAH reviews including Vinay and Sri’s extensive familiariality with this process. 3. Rahul presented an update about his call to Vidya Bhavan (VB) in Rajasthan and evaluation of the ongoing project. Incidentally, this was his first call to VB which hosts classes from the 2^nd to 12^th standard. The feedback that he presented was mainly focused on the fact that VB requested for general Math and Science text books. If any volunteer has any such text books that s/he can spare, they should be sent to VB. 4. Rahul presented an update on the CDC project (Raj had talked about this in the previous Asha meeting). They had a talk with the on-site project stewards regarding funding and informed us that CDC does not have FCRI approval which meant that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to send funds generated in foreign currency to the site. 5. There was a discussion about Asha Seattle budget for the coming year esp. recurring/non-recurring funding for new ventures as well as extensions of ongoing projects. There is an estimated $100K excess which can be channelised to this end. Swati and Jayshree are the project coordinators. 6. There was a discussion regarding issues raised by Raj, in his absentia, by Rahul. There is a need to prioritize criteria for future funding depending on inputs from site visits and the extent of the project’s vision for empowerment. A need to decide deadline for sanctioning of on-hold projects was also discussed. Asha Seattle should also explore new areas which needed urgent attention and funding. This was followed by a discussion on various projects presently on-hold. 7. There was a brief presentation on the “Gram Mangal” project. This project was unanimously approved. 8. Swati talked about extension of CMS project which would involve approx. $5K. The breakup of the expenditure is: Completion of the hostel: $4K A second round of teacher’s training: $1K. This would include honorarium for the trainers, cost of materials involved in the workshop and food. This was also approved. 9. Srijan initiated a call for voting on including the text book review project on the Asha webpage. However, a main technical hitch is that to be featured on the Asha webpage, a particular project has to have funding, which is not applicable in this case. This could be taken care of by categorizing this exercise as an Asha “activity” rather than a “project” per se. The text book review group has just completed working on the text books of Stds. 5 & 6 of the Gujarat State Board and found widespread and gross misrepresentation of historical facts. These comments, as well as the text book, are available on CD-ROM now for easy accessibility and sharing of information between different Asha groups. The purpose is to get acquainted with the present status of saffronization of school education which could be followed up by a petition to the concerned authorities with the support of an independent group. However, there were strong concerns about such views being misconstrued as “political” or “collective and unamimous” views once these are included on the Asha webpage. There was a suggestion for creating a separate webpage for this activity with a link on the Asha Seattle homepage. However, the general consensus was that before such views are expressed as part of “Asha” in general, these should be approved by the Asha governing body. 10. Sunil, the present webmaster (along with Narendra) of Asha Seattle website for the last two years, expressed his desire for passing along the responsibility to a new webmaster. The unanimous choice was Sri who, in addition to having a good knowledge of programming, is a regular and reliable volunteer. The transition will be phased over a period of six months with active help from Sunil. 11. Sunil also presented a project from “Kalpavriksha” which is a environmental sustenance group based in Pune and Delhi. Kalpavriksha has undertaken to prepare a comprehensive environmental outline of North Kannada region; this not only involves the characterization of the flora and fauna of this region in the form of a book but also activities like arranging camps for children and school teachers to make them aware of their rich, still-untapped ecological potential, planning a seed bank, training people to start kitchen gardening and so on. There was a discussion about the proposed budget which seemed way too high for the purposes stated. However, Sunil still did not have the reports of the site visit to Kalpavriksha. No concrete decision has been taken on funding this project. 12. Shailendra presented some preliminary peeks into a site visit conducted at the village Sotai Education project (near Delhi). This is a free school attended by about 100 children. A site visit was conducted by an Asha volunteer from the Chicago chapter who was very enthusiastic about taking up this project, if Asha Seattle doesn’t fund this. However, this school is being run by Shailendra’s father, which eliminates him from directly pursuing this effort as a project steward. He has been advised to put the site visit report on Asha Seattle website and ask for a volunteer to be the project steward. 13. Vibhavaree did a preliminary presentation of the draft proposal for Thakkar Bapa Service Foundation. Pertinent information presented can be found at - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asha-seattle/files/Projects/ proposal-submissionBapagrama.doc She also shared information from the website: http://www.educationalpraxis.org/Bapagrama/BAPAGMA.htm Since she has family ties to this group, she requested volunteers for taking on project contact ownership. Venky agreed to take it on, as he will be visiting Bangalore soon, and can make a site visit. Vibhavaree has very preliminary estimates for funding required, and will send Raj a mail for addition to the current projects spreadsheet.

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