Date

04/06/2006

Venue

HUB Room, University of Washington

Attendees

Eera, Tarun, Shriram, Sree, Arundhati, Swathi, Srijan, Vibhavaree, Venky, Vani, Rahul, Tapoja, Raghav, Tullika

 

ORGANIZATIONAL: Announcements made by Project Co-ordinators

  • Financial update for projects due.
  • Site visits needed for some projects.
  • Every team needs to present in the meeting every year.

 

ORGANIZATIONAL: Should we have a booth at show by Alan Klemins - Srijan

  • Srijan made an announcement about a show by Alan Klemins ( a political satirist) called How to save the World. Asha can have a booth there. Should we consider ?
  • Voting Results :
    • Yes - 9
    • No - 0
    • Abstain - 2

 

PROJECT: Saakshar - presented by Tulika

  • Tulika presented the project Saakshar. She presented the various stats of this project. Suggestions : Research the possibility of selling the stuff like candles made by the students.

 

PROJECT : RDT (Rural Development Trust) - presented by Vani

  • The project needs to expland from a school for 200 children to 400 children in multiple locations.
  • Vani brought this up for discussion in the meeting by first presenting the financial requirements of expanding the scope of the project and there were a lot of suggestions and questions.
  • Suggestions :
    1. What is the tuition teacher and why is it different ?
    2. What is the weekly review meeting and what is Rs.25/- for ? Why is this estimate for 40 weeks ?
    3. Student/Teacher ratio is ideal right now.
    4. Will the students study here till they graduate ? Consider making it so that they can eventually be transitioned into the local schools.
    5. How long will this school be needed ?
    6. Will there be more immigrants ?
    7. Community land is being used right now for the school, push for something legal ? (a) Get some permission in written form ? (b) Even if no permission can be obtained, going ahead makes sense.
    8. Should they rent or build something ? (a) Building something new seems more practical. (b) Could involve the parents, in building this (as paid labour).
    9. One more co-ordinator needed ?
    10. Shed/Building or whatever is built should follow building codes.
    11. Are these places slums/villages ? Is the panchayat a legal body there ?
    12. If this is close to Madanapalle, can we get help from Ravi Aluganti ? - he has a mobile library, can help in teaching skills etc. - he can help with items 8 and 9 in the financial budget document.
    13. Can they also approach other organizations for help ? (now that they have visibility).
    14. Is the school for 5 or 6 days in a week ?
    15. How are they implementing a library in 4 different places ? - also, TNSF has a library, maybe they can help too ?
    16. How are 5 bicycles going to be used by so many teachers ? Do they need more ?
    17. Van – how many children need van service ? Do they need more vans ?
    18. Are ther 4 different schools close or far away to each other ?
    19. Only 1 computer ? Do they need someone skilled with computers ?
    20. Website needs to be updated with the latest information about this project.

 

PROJECT : Discussion on Bhopal Issue.

  • Raghav talked about the letter being sent to the PM and also about the financial part of it. People voted on both.
  • Voting Results : Vote on chapter endorsement of letter to PM
    • Yes - 15
    • No - 2
    • Abstain - 3

Vote on funding for this

    • Yes - 15
    • No - 2
    • Abstain - 3

Following were some of the points raised during the discussions.

  • Asha as an org. seems to be for supporting education related causes, should we support Bhopal too ?
    • Also , we tell our donors only about education, so will we alienate them by supporting non-education related causes ?
    • Should we let donors know about the complete charter of Asha ?
    • Finally, this dicusson ended on the note that majority of our projects are education related, so we spend more time advertising that, but we never limited our support to just education and it is mentioned in the Asha constitution.
  • What is our stance on supporting activist projects ?
    • We support only developmental activities, while activism is further removed form development activities.
    • Volunteer bandwidth is already limited, should we spend this time in supporting activism ?
    • If infringements of law happen during the walk/event, what happens ? what will our stance be ?
    • Should we differentate between idealogical and financial support ?
    • Should we make this a donor specific project ? - majority suggested otherwise.
    • Is a site visit being done or this ? - having Asha Delhi do it, given the short amount of time available was suggested.

 

 

 

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