Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 01/03/07 Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Morton Johnson Room, Redmond, WA Attendees: Javed, Srijan, Swati, Subhashish, Binay, Ravi, Kannan, Vibhavaree, Raghav, Megha, Shailesh, Vijay. Project - Uthnau - Presented by Swati § All the kids are joining the government schools but dropping out after 6 to 12 months. § Very less infrastructure. That area doesn't even get Newspaper § Started a crèche to take good care of kids for atleast 6 to 8 hours. § Needs a complete revamp with respect to adult education. § Women participation is very less in Uthnau.All women work in crèche from 6 AM to 6 PM. § Coal reserves were found in the area. It might be developed as a thermal power project. § Uthnau is trying to educate the people of surrounding areas of the effects of having a coal mine. § We'll probably need another meeting to talk about Uthnau in more detail Discussion - Sachar Committee Report which is about socio-economic and educational status of Muslims in India - Presented by Javed Some key points from the presentation: only 3% of kids go to Madrasas. Muslims live with an inferiority complex as 'every bearded man is considered an ISI [Pakistan's foreign spy agency] agent'. Banks refuse loans to 'negative/red Zones' (Muslim concentrated areas). Very few percent of Muslim population in Govt./Private Sectors. Literacy rate of Muslims is bad compared to others. Less access to education and facing discrimination in almost all sectors. There was a lot of questions raised including: if RTI can be used to get the teachers back in Madrasas (Govt. pays for English and Mathematics teachers in Madrasas) how effective will affirmative action be if we can do something to educate the Muslim community about their legal rights How receptive is the Muslim community to any help offered by the outside communities? Javed proposed that we should come up with a long term action plan that can scale up to reach millions of needy communities. It was felt that we needed more time to discuss this in detail, so we decided to continue the discussion in our next meeting, especially focusing on the recommendations of the report and how we can make a difference. Project : Bhopal gas Crime: March to Delhi – Presented by Raghav § Bhopalis walked from Bhopal to Delhi to meet the Prime Minister in March 2006 and press their demands that included clean up of the factory site and provision of clean drinking water. § Four of the demands got approved out of the six that were made. § Raghav presented an update on those four promises. The Government of India has made some advance in meeting these demands for example by sanctioning money for the supply of clean water. Asha Seattle extended support for the Bhopalis' food and other living expenses during their stay in Delhi. Detailed expense report was presented. Updates from Srijan § Geetanjali is coming up. Need for volunteers. Interested people, please let Palani or Srijan know. § Talk by Suma Josson (and a screening of one of her documentaries) is coming up in February. § Can potentially partner with Tasveer/UW Womens Center.    . Vote for partnering with Tasveer/ UW Womens Center/ Chaaya        Yes:11 No:0 Abstain:0. Approved. § Annual report is due and project stewards need to send project writeups if they haven't done so already.

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