Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 11/14/07 Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Morton Johnson Room, Redmond, WA Attendees: Mani, Suma, Swati, Kannan, Kappu, Satyalit, Sujit, Bindu, Ken, Srijan, Bhavana, Mukul, Megha Update on Project WHY – Presented by  Kannan C Iyer § Brief overview of the project – after school support program for kids from urban slums in south Delhi. § Summary of asha-seattle's involvement in 2006. Founder Anouradha Bakshi greatly relieved of fundraising due to our support and can now focus more on sustainability and expansion. § Overview of Kannans' site visits – some pictures of the various centers. Pictures exemplify diversity of the centers, their set up (some permanent buildings, some under tents) and different levels of children availing of the program. School so popular that kids are on wait-list! Vote: Recurring Funding request for ~25K for 3 years (50% of the annual budget to run 14 centers) Yes – 13, No – 0, Abstain – 0 Update on Betsy Elizabeth Trust (BET) - Presented by Sujit § Project overview – crèche for 2-5 yr olds of day laborers. Previously funded by http://www.bethaniakids.org/ a bigger organization that runs crèches all over the world. BET would like to go independent so that they have more control over the management and fundraising for the crèche. Currently the trust is managed by a board of 5 members. § Sujit has spoken with the American contact to assess why BET wants to go independent and if there were any concerns Asha should address over the issue. None were discovered and steward is confident that everything is above the board. § In 2006 we supported one program, the new budget is calling for asha-seattle to support a portion of their overall expenditure. Site visit is pending and so project approval for 3 years is stalled. Vote: Funding approval for next 6 months only Yes – 11, No – 0, Abstain – 2 Chapter Update -  Presented by Srijan § Srijan summarized asha-seattle events: Marathon weekend 23-25^th Nov. We are official partners. Volunteers required for expo and water station. § Hosting talk by Smt. Dayamani: No objections were raised Update on Miles for Smiles program – Presented by Megha § Project WHY and RDT were agreed upon to be showcased at the marathon website and expo Update on Champa Mahila Society (CMS) Special Children project - Presented by Swati § Due to volunteer bandwidth issues Swati would like to change this from a support a child project to a regular project. Regular updates are required of SAC and due to small # of volunteers and the large #of projects she stewards, this approach is not conducive under the present circumstances. Vote: Change the project from SAC to regular project Yes – 12, No – 0, Abstain – 1 Update on Parijat Academy – Presented by Satyajit Nath/Bhavna Kishan § Satyajit requests materials from the learning aids group – since the group has not convened for over a year there's been an organizational gap due to conflicting schedules and no concrete target for the aids made. Satyajit was referred to stores instead.

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