Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 02/27/08

Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Sammamish B Room, Redmond, WA

Attendees: Sandeep, Salima, Eera, Bansal, Vijay, Srirangam, Hareesh, Sujit, Mani, Binay, Srijan, Ken, Prashant, Vibhavaree, Aditi, Mukul.

GRAVIS – Vijay (PPI volunteer)

·         GRAVIS was established in 1983 by a group of social activists. Works in over 800 villages of Thar Desert, Rajasthan.

·         Ask – This project is in the initial proposal stage. Seeking project stewards to take the project further.

·         Does community development like water conservation, education, healthcare

·         Current proposal aims to expand their work to six new villages

·         Self help groups that run businesses of handicrafts, etc

·         4-8 inches of rainfall in a year in the region

·         Build bunds to collect water and preserve the water for the community to use

·         Have other Asha chapters worked with GRAVIS in the past? What is the past experience

·         The current budget proposal is for 24 months. We need this for 1 year, since this is a 1st time project.

·         Project go ahead is pending on having 3 project stewards. We need at least a couple more stewards for this project.

·         Go ahead and ask for a project proposal from GRAVIS once we find adequate number of stewards.

BETSY Creche Project -  Sujit

·         Update on Site visit / Report

·         Based in Kodaikanal. Asha funded project since 2006.

·         Asha approved urgent budget for crèche subject to a site visit for continuation.

·         Bhanu who is relative of Asha Seattle volunteer did the site visit. She is a teacher herself.

·         Kids are taken very good care of. Personal hygiene. Nurse and doctor to handle the health. Maintains health chart for tracking growth of kids.

·         Kids are happy and healthy.

·         Kids come from parents who are day laborers. Barely have one meal but that is getting taken care of through crèche.

·         3 creche in Kodai was visited but the fourth is at very remote location.

·         She spent a day at crèches but didn’t meet with parents.

·          Rents are going up in the location and multiple time they had to move in recent past. They have identified a land on which they would like to build a permanent structure. Asha would be open to evaluate proposal on the same. Sujit will work on it and bring it back.

·         Overall, she was very happy with the organization.

·         There is suggestion to have books with big alphabets and story books. Srijan recommended evaluating working with TNSF to see if some of the activities based learning in Tamil.

·         Teachers training was raised by Anne and Sujit got her some information from Jayashree that will help in this respect.

·         Age group: Less than 5.

·         Project needs one more steward to bring the count to 3.

·         Since it was condition to a good site visit report to extend beyond six months, the remaining funding for this project is approved

·         The total budget ask for 2007 – 2008 is INR 525580. Of this, we have already approved and sent across INR 261330 last year. The amount of funds approved in this meeting is remaining ask of INR 264250.

Chapter / Project coordinator update

Next Asha Workshop - Srijan

·         Discussion on untouchability in India at the next workshop

·         Documentary presentation on untouchability / media.

·         We won’t be able to use MS cafeteria for the workshop. Will have to shift to a conf room

-            Sent Asha calendars to all top donors

-            Ask for volunteers to contribute to the next Asha newsletter.

-            List of projects with Site visit pending - Harish

-            List of projects that need stewards – Vibhavaree

-            Project process doc clarifications – Vibhavaree

·         Project approvals – Make project update mandatory for all projects every year. Abolishing the 3 year approval policy for projects that used to be the earlier convention.

·         Project Stewards – At least 2 of the 3 project stewards need to be local to Seattle.

·         Audit Reports – Guideline to project stewards for getting annual audit reports for all projects regularly.

·         Project Fund Receipts – Continue to sent them to finance team and they keep track of it.

·         Who does the site visit? – New projects require an Asha volunteer to do the site visit.

 

 

 

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