Minutes of Asha Seattle Meeting, May 18, 2004

Venue: Redmond Library

Participants: Arindam, Jayashree, Paramita, Preeti, Raghav, Rahul, Raj, Ravi, Sri, Srijan, Venky, Vibhavaree, Vidyanand, Binay.

The agenda discussed were

1.      Rahul distributed flyers for the talk by Balaji Sampath (on 25th May at Microsoft Campus) to be put up at different places.

2.      Rahul discussed about the evaluation and voting on the different WAH proposals. The deadline for submitting chapter votes is set at 11:59 pm PDT, Sunday, the 13th of June 2004. The discussion (and ranking) of the WAH proposals is scheduled on Saturday (22nd May) at the Microsoft Campus.

3.      Rahul and Raghav reviewed the Vigyan Ashram (VA) project (http://www.ashanet.org/pune/current-efforts.html).  Some questions which were raised were:

·         Provide breakup of paid staff

·         Provide breakup of vocational staff

·         Why Silicon Valley chapter isn’t funding the project any more?

·         Enquire into NGOs that have utilized VA’s CD

·         Provide better financial information in the budget page.

4.      Preeti talked about the upcoming Asha West conference (on the Memorial Day weekend). She urged volunteers to register and also to host out-of-town guests. Since the keynote speaker (Dr. KP Singh from UW) has withdrawn due to family engagements, she asked volunteers to look for keynote speakers.

·         The movie to be screened during the conference also has to be decided. She also urged volunteers to come forward to moderate the sessions. Moderating would involve researching the reading material pertinent to the session and distributing it to the attendees.

5.      Vidyanand talked about two proposals:

·         ISDGEI based in Kolhapur (request for additional funds)

·         Another proposal from Pune. This is extension of Door-To-Step School
http://www.doorstepschool.org/dss/home.php

·         ISDGEI is asking for extra funds this year, up from ~$4.4K to $6K. Asha-MSU will be paying $1.1K for this and the rest is being requested from Asha-Seattle. Asha-Pune has done site visits for this particular project and has recommended funding. MSU-Asha has been funding this project for the past 6 yrs whreas Seattle’s involvement has for just about 1 yr. One question raised was why ILP is pulling out from funding this project.

·         Door-to-step school project was also discussed.

·         No decision was taken on either of these two projects.

6.      Jayashree provided updates on Chhoti-si-Asha event to be held on June 19th at Kane Hall,UW. Issues discussed were:

·         The content: only folk themes allowed; no Bollywood song/dance routines.

·         Advertisement for the event: the poster has to be readied asap (Anupa to do this and Sri to take print-out).

·         Ticket price: $10 flat (for all)

·         Time of the event: 2-6 pm was found to be the most suitable.

·         Food: brown bags vs other alternatives (e.g. Udupi) were discussed. This is going to be followed up later between the volunteers involved.

·         The fact that the participants would also be required to pay money to attend the event.

7.      Raj discussed about one time funding for UMBVS, Rajasthan. Asha-Seattle,   Asha-SV and Asha-St. Louis have supported this project in the past.  UMBVS runs about 10 schools in very remote areas of Rajasthan for the children of landless laborers who have been resettled near the Indira Gandhi Canal.  Asha has supported this project for 3 years. The reason why they are asking for funding support againis because UMBVS has not been successful in getting the schools to be funded by Govt. schemes. UMBVS has been asking other organizations also to help them.  In fact, they have received a promise by NEG Resource Center for funding from 2005. A site visit was done by Asha last year and they have been encouraged repeatedly by Asha-Seattle for getting funding from other sources. Raj has additionally requested Asha-SV for funding UMBVS but hasn’t heard back.

·         UMBVS is asking for Rs. 407,000 for 2004-2005 school year. Raj has been working with UMBVS to reduce the budget from Rs. 6 lakhs to Rs. 4 lakhs (funding only 1 coordinator instead of 2 coordinators at a lower cost; reduced training for teachers).  3 lakhs of 4 lakhs requested is teacher and coordinator honorarium. This project was approved.

 

 

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