Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 09/01/2005. Venue: Tandoor, Seattle Attendees: Vani, Ranajit, Prashant, Ravi, Raghav, Sree, Shayon, Swati, Srijan, Vibhavaree, Kavita, Hemant, Pranav, Tarun Discussion: Sunil, Vani, Raghav and Tarun presented their agenda items followed with some discussion. The description of the projects, resulting action items and voting outcomes are mentioned below: Tarun: miles4smiles concept for services approval: Description: To introduce the concept of volunteer services that could be sold to potential donors. Questions: 1). Tarun to come up with a proposal for corporate sponsorship and send to Asha Seattle members for approval about the corporations that we should approach for marathon 2). Vibhavaree to get more details on the Indian Express sponsorship. Voting: Passed unanimously Sree: Fellowship project for Ravi Aluganti: Description: Ravi Aluganti has been a Asha Fellow for last four years. Ravi’s involvement in different schools (fifteen) has got mixed responses so far. Everyday, Ravi visits two schools everyday and interact with kids during the visit. However, there have been some challenges in the current strategy. Ravi came up with a new strategy on how to tackle these challenges. In Gains from having this fellowship: Ravi has trained many teachers, done some workshops, carries out Learning Network conferences, many site visit reports school related etc. Overall very helpful to our other projects, Questions asked: What were the results of Ravi’s involvement with all the different schools? Sree’s Answer: No concrete measures, however, the dropout rate has gone down. Is the mobile library facility available during the summers too? Sree’s Answer: Not feasible to keep all the different kids informed about it. Why does Ravi not have a schedule? (Sree going to find out that information). Challenges: Teachers are resisting to this change Some teachers are not consistent coming to schools as they live at a distance from the schools. Teachers move with his learning material as they are transferred from one place to another. Change of government policies also affects his work. New strategies: Creation of a new learning center (a youth would be helping him out - animator) To start a hub and spoke system, where Ravi has a central school and has animators in all the adjoining/local schools. This frees up his time commitments and the whole process would be more effective. Questions for the new strategy? How does Rs. 750/- per month salary for the animators feasible in that area? Sree’s Answer: Need to check with Ravi on this. How many animators does Ravi want to have for this project? Sree’s answer: We want to ideally get animators for all the schools. Won’t it be too big of a step from the current place? Sree’s answer: It shall be phased out. How is Ravi going to find people with his current time commitments? Additional Suggestions: As a part of project evaluation, we can have metrics for each specific project Ravi has to focus to recruitment of animators as of now. Proposal: To go ahead with the new proposal and get Ravi on board with the proposal. Voting: Yes: 10 Abstains: 4 Raghav: Fellowship proposal for Sumi Chandresh: As a follow-up of last meeting, a fairly detailed report of de-schooling and the whole project was obtained. Sumi has decided to do a pilot project with us for six months before we actually make a decision on the approval of the proposal. Questions asked about the new proposal: Are the kids going to leave their schools and study with Sumi? Raghav’s Answer: No, the kids are going to go to school in the morning and come to this workshop in the evening. Is Sumi planning to achieve all the listed activities in the proposal? No, it’s a phased project. How are the kids going to go their home works? It’s a three hour project everyday and the kids would work on the homework after this evening class. What would be the frequency of the visit? Daily. What is the concept that Sumi would continue after the six month proposal time? It would be an organic process to define the concept of the project that she would work on. How do we decide if we are continuing after six months? During this six month’s time, we will come up with some definition of success. What is economic background of the students? Need to check out with Sumi. When is the beginning of this project? In order to ensure that there is no conflict with school and pilot project? Budget: Work on the finer details once the proposal is approved. Proposal: Either go else-where for funding for the six month project or we will support the project with the provision where we can claim the laptop and the camera if the project after six months. Voting: Yes: 8 Abstain: 2 No: 1 Vani: Two topics: A visit from Micheal Mazgaonkar: Objections: No. Ryan from Bhopal Gas strategy: Question: Should we extend our support in helping the Sambhavna clinic. Since, we have done it in the past; there should not be any voting for extending support for Sambhavna clinic.

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