Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 10/25/06 Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Morton Johnson Room, Redmond, WA Attendees: Manohita, Pavan, Rajesh, Rohit, Swati, Srijan, Kavita, Vibhavaree, Shailesh, Kannan, Harish, Ira, Saurabh, Aparajita, Ravi, Sudarshan. Coordinator Notes (Srijan) § Allgorhythms went well, and helped raise around $10000 including donations. § Asha-Seattle is an official partner of the Seattle Marathon. We're required to set up a water booth and help with organization on marathon day. Volunteers are needed to help out with this. § A question was raised about whether audited financial statements from projects are a requirement. Sudarshan will follow up with Sridhar about this. Vikasana Bridge School – Manohita § The project was sent $1500 in June for emergency funding. § The school takes children of migration laborers in Shimoga district in Karnataka and schools them for a year before transferring them to government schools. Around 25 children are admitted every year. § Girl children are given preference, as are children whose parents are both illiterate. § The school also educates the parents about the value of education. § The project comes to us from Asha Melbourne; it is a project of Asha Florida which we are only supporting. § A site visit was completed in December 2005, and another one is scheduled to happen in December 2006. The school is two years old. They require funding for 2-3 years. A point was raised that we should approve funding for the project on a yearly basis since the project belongs to another chapter, and they should be encouraged to find other sources of funding. The total amount requested is Rs 21,360 (from June 2006 to April 2007). This is around $4800 for one year. Vote : 11 yes, 2 abstain Workshop for high school students in Kolkata - Swati § Swarnivar is organizing a workshop for high school students from November 17th to 22nd. Swarnivar has a long-standing relationship with Asha. The organization works with high school students to make education meaningful. The workshop will have four components: Interactive corners for students which have working models and demos for topics like urban gardening, power and water and mask making. Workshops for teachers in English, math, environmental education and life sciences. Rangmanch -Performances by the kids for kids Colloquium - dialog on education § a and b were proposed as candidates for chapter funding. While considering funding, Swati raised a point with Sujit and Sudeshna (working with Swarnivar) that we are being given too short notice, and that Asha-Seattle would have liked to get involved deeper with the workshop. The budget comes to $2344. Vote: 12 yes, 1 abstain Project Why - presented by Kannan § The objective of the project is community transformation through education. The project is based in slums of Delhi; it runs 8 schools which impart supplementary education to children in the slums and takes care of healthcare to some extent. § It was started in 1998 by Anuradha, and got FCRA clearance in 2003. Today, there are 600 students in the schools. § The children are registered with state-run schools, and the schools provide supplementary education and an environment for the children to learn. Several students get waitlisted because of funding restrictions. § It was recognized by UNESCO, but no funding was provided. Alumni from the school come back to teach in the schools.  § A funding branch of the project in France has made a commitment to provide 1000 euros per month in funding. In addition, NDTV is also providing funding, but it will stop this year.  § The monthly funding requirement is Rs 1.5 lakhs; roughly $3240 a month. This translates to $6 per child per month.  § Komal and Ravi are stewards  for the project in addition to Kannan. Vibhavaree suggested that we should provide funding for a  year and only for recurring expenses. The budget comes to $26880 one-time. Vote: 12 yes, 2 abstain Adruta - presented by Srijan § This project was presented a couple of times before in the meetings, once by Rajat, a former employee of Microsoft who sits on the board for the school and is closely associated with the project. He was able to answer many of the questions that came up. Voting for the project was pending a site visit by an Asha volunteer. Arindam did a site visit for it. Some questions were raised about the cost breakup and there was concern that the expenses were on the high side. It was suggested that Asha should fund the project for 1 year up to a sum of $30,000. Vote: 11 yes, 3 abstain RTE (Vibhavaree) § A working group in Asha Seattle has studied the RTE bill and come up with comments and recommendations. These comments need to be voted on to be endorsed by the chapter so that they can be sent for review Asha-wide. Since most people present at the meeting had not read the bill or the comments made by the working group, it was decided that an online poll will be set up with a deadline on Saturday night. Vibhavaree went over highlights of comments and proposed recommendations. Voting : 8 yes, 0 abstains/no's - (approved)

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