Meeting minutes 05/04/08

Attended by: Gaurav,Bharath, ArvindV, Itisha, Charanya, Arun, Ashwini, Ganesh, Murali, Nivas, Mohit, Bhavna,Savitha, Abhinav, Sais, ArvindR,Kaushik, Rahul, Srinivas, Vinod.

[1] Gnanodaya site visit and proposal : Bharath

Bharathcontinued his presentation from last week. Answered questions that came up lastweek:
* The kids who stay in the hostel are considered askids from the leprosy school. But that is within 5km radius. Once they move tohigh school in Chengelpet, they have no issues.
* Hostel kids and day-time kids eat separately. Some attempts have beenmade to make them sit together and eat etc. The parents of the day school-ed kids protested the eating together because they all eat fromthe same set of plates, and a perception that that might be harmful stillpersists. The kids do study and play together. We plan to suggest thatthey work on a plan for this year to eliminate this segregation.

* When the kids go throughregular check-ups, its mostly physical examination. If things look suspicious,only then is a blood test conducted. In the past 8 years, only 8 kids have beendiagnosed with leprosy and have been treated well. The regular physicalcheck-ups happen once in every two weeks for each kid.

* Leprosy treatment lasts for 6months and after that the kids are fully cured.
* Gnanodaya dont have anypension scheme and Mr. Thangaraj alone is continuingsince he used to have a PPF.

* Why diesel van in particular?-- A Maruti van wont survivewear and tear during the rainy season. They are fairly clear that they want adiesel van or a Tata Sumo or some form of a jeep. They have tried to find somesource of reliable transportation everyday. They have tried autos, but twoautos for 8 teachers is at Rs800 per day, which is very high. They are not able to get a better quote. Theautos dont want to come during the rains.

The proposal contains a full budget of all their expenses. DIK will pick upwhatever is left over after we decide our funding. Discussion on what we wouldlike to fund etc. Maybe we can approach other Asha chapterstoo. Possibly suggest the funding of purchasing the van and its maintenance(fuel, driver salaries, etc.) costs to other Asha chapters.Bharath tofollow up on this. Austinhad funded teacher's salaries last year. We could potentially consider the sameagain. That covered 10 teachers last year. This year, they have projected Rs 8.4lakhs for all the salaries (teachers and staff).

Can we pave the 4km of the road? They have not been able to get the localgovernment to pave the roads. Can this be paved using NREGA? The travel needsto be addressed immediately since they are rapidly losing teachers due to thehardness of the travel. They also need to hire more lady teachers, and sincethey cannot easily cycle from the main
road, its not been easy to hire them. The communitycan try to work with the panchayat or the softwarepark authorities to get the roads built. Maybe working on the road should beindependent of getting the van.

Extensive discussion on whethercorpus funds are to be encouraged or not. As a chapter we will make sure ourfunding will cover all increases in funding, both in teacher's salaries, aswell as paying new teachers. Bharath suggests wesupport $15K for the teachers' salaries and the computer infrastructure.

Vote~1: Asha Austin decides to fund $15K towardsteachers' salaries and $1300 for the computer infrastructure. Teachers'salaries to be sent in two equal instalments, all computerinfrastructure amount sent in one disbursal.

YES: 15; NO: 0.

Vote~2: Asha Austin approves the budget for Van plus maintenance
(driver cost + fuel etc.). Finances for this to come from other Asha
chapters and Bharath will approach them. The exactamounts are not clear yet.

YES: 15; NO: 0.

[2] Show of Hope Proposal: Sais

Sais gave a background of what we did lastyear and the reasons behind organizing this event. Last year's effort was toincrease local awareness, rather than raise money.
* Publicity: prepare materials, identify and work on fundraising sources,setting a fundraising goal, ticket sales etc.

* Participants: arranging to getparticipants, way to showcase talent etc. what events to hold.
* Event day: coordination, organize etc. volunteers to take care of differenttasks. project booths, video etc.

Sais is going to be swamped over the next fewmonths, so we need to check if we have enough volunteers and chapter strengthto drive this event. Last year we did this in end-sep/early-oct.Much of the infrastructure can be reused from last year. What we need is agroup of people to own different pieces and drive the event. If we have a
core of 4-6 people, then we have enough quorum todrive the event.

Maybe we can increase our fundraising by having companies sponsor ads on the brochure etc. Pledge cards during the event can be the way to contribute to the increased fundraising target. Suggestion that we showcase a particular project or two and say the event will be a project(s)-specific fundraiser. Also make the event a fundraising talent show.

Suggestion on whether we should plug into asha-wideNotes of Hope. Should we do one over the other? Rahul is on the ashawide mailing list, so he is to figure out the details. Sais to come up with an estimate of what needs to be done and have a detailedtask list.

[3] General Funds proposal: ArvindV

Asha DC to put up the proposal for ARC vote on the 14th. Two parts to the proposal. One part is for innovative,large, scalable projects and another part is for existing projects. They will put together a committee which will decide on this. There are certainconstraints, like a max of 50% of a project to be raised through the general funds. Arvind will send the proposal out to everyone and folks to send in questions.