Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 08/02/06 Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Morton Johnson Room, Redmond, WA Attendees: Shailesh, Shayon, Raghav, Swati, Rajesh, Naren, Deb, Sharad, Kavita, Ken, Raji, Vibhavaree, Aparajita, Gagan Project - Bhoomiheen - Presented by Gagan Gagan provided a brief intro to Bhoomiheen. There is a an urgent request to provide additional funding for completion of construction work on Middle school building, which a donor has stepped up to fund. A request to vote for approving this funding was put forth. It was decided to put this vote on-line. Part-I of the funding request was voted for on-line in July and approved. This request is now for part-II. Project Co-ordination - Vibhavaree Vibhavaree provided an update, saying that an email requesting all project stewards to update project requirements will be going out in a couple of weeks. Nitya Sewa Society - Deb, Sharad & Kavita This project provides a residential facility to children who have been abandoned by parents, or who are without parents. There is a request from this project to fund the schooling needs for kids who are able to attend school -- $4200+ a year. The project was voted on and because of majority YES vote, was approved for a three year funding. Voting: YES (6 votes), NO (1 vote), Abstain (8 persons). Notes:  (i) This has been site visited. (ii) We should refer to this project as – Child Home; and avoid calling it an orphanage. (iii) It is a very clean place. (iv) There are other private donations that come from Germany; and some times these donations run below the needed budget. At such times other grants have been obtained by the project to sustain the child home. (v) Kids go to different schools due to age and level of capability. Some asks and clarifications were requested. These were recorded by Deb and will be sent to project stewards in India for clarification Project - CMS - Presented by Swati and Shayon Two remote schools funded earlier via SAC. These have growing needs and time has come to transition these to regular Asha Seattle projects. Number of children has grown from 30 to approximately 200. Project has been reviewed every year, and has been site visited.  Notes: (i) Credible project, trust factor is high (ii) It covers multiple facets of the kids, who are well taken care of (iii) Schools are in different areas (iv) Children staying at CMS consider this as their true home (v) Remote schools are early childhood centers (vi)     Small capacity structures with 160+ kids. Upto 3 classes are held in the same room Request is for $23,040 per year. The project was voted on for one year funding and was approved by majority votes. Voting: YES (12 votes), NO (Zero votes), Abstain (4 persons) On conversion of this from SAC to Regular Asha Seattle project: Voting Yes (16 people – all) Sikshana - Presented by Raji Mr Ramamurthi who started this in India, presented this to Asha Seattle volunteers earlier. There is a request for $8000 – one time – from Asha. There were a few questions posed and Raji took the action item to get answers to these questions. She walked the volunteers through a slide deck and can share it on-demand. RTE (Right to education) Campaign - Presented by Raghav He asked if Asha Seattle should take a position on this topic and work towards preparing and submitting an RTE campaign demand letter to Indian Government. After some discussion this question was brought to vote. There were 10 YES votes, and 1 abstain. Due to less than 15 votes, it was decided to put this for vote on-line.

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