Meeting Minutes 09/07/08
Attendees: Jith, Archie, Sankar, Dawn, David, Bhavna, Mohit, Sharanya, Arvind V, Ganesh, Gaurav, Bharath, Charanya, Sais, Ranga, Murali, Mary, Itisha.
1.Friends of Asha Club - Archie Veeravalli and Sankar Sunderesan
Asha for Education Student Chapter –
Discussion
i. Club needs to be inclusive to everyone
iii. Funds raised can be
sent to Asha for Education, since it a recognized
non-profit, and all-inclusive
iv. Bharath will check with the national chapter treasury group to discuss how the funds raised can be managed – especially if some of the funds
v. One idea suggested by the students' teacher Ms. Dawn Delgado – use funds raised for Asha's Indian projects, but for local communities, focus on spreading awareness
vi.
Fundraising Idea: Change for Education – Students save up
their free change and add to the fundraising boxes provided by the club.
vii.
Fundraising Idea:
viii. Participation in Asha Strides of Hope – focus on students who can
sign-up in the next 3 weeks. Shorter distances fundraising initiatives can be
discussed later in the semester. Students have to be at least 16 years old to
participate.
ix.
Participation in Show of Hope is also a possibility
x. Publicity:
- Students have a Facebook group, through which they are recruiting volunteers
- 9/8: Back to School Evening: Students plan to present the club and recruit members then
- Students have a gmail account that will be used to communicate with the students.
2.Khushboo Welfare Society - Ranga
a. Ranga stewarded this project in AID-TAMU.
b.It is a school for persons with mental and multiple disabilities. Also provides rehabilitation and vocational training.
c. Ranga has been involved with the organization for the past 3 years
d.Ranga's friend's Aunt is the chairperson.
e. They didn't have a permanent center earlier. Moving from one place to another. Got discounted land from Haryana government in 2003. They now have a permanent building and pay for land in installments.
f. Ranga talked about various fund raising efforts that KWS runs – individual contributions, corporate funding, gov funding, half marathon in association with hutch.
g. Children of all ages: infants, kids, adults (30+ years of age also). Various programs for children with various degrees of diabilities.
h. 4 students per teacher.
i. Day school (8.30am to 1pm) with school bus facility.
j. 51 males, 11 females (Ques: Why is the ratio of boys to girls this skewed?)
k.Also offer a lot of support and training to parents to enable them to deal with challenged children.
l. 53 students pay Rs 400 a month, 9 children receive free aid.
m. (Ques: How much money is there in their corpus?)
n. (Ques: Why don't people who can afford it, actually pay the full cost of the school?)
o.Ranga will put up all the documents online so that everyone can
take a look at it and we can then discuss the actual proposal later.
p.Ques: Who were the corporate sponsors and NGOs that contributed in 2008?
3.Unnati Update - Murali
a. They have ~$6000 left over from last year. Their question is whether they can use this money towards their next year expenses.
b.Initially it took long time to send them the first installment of money. They lived on show string budget then. Later when the money was actually sent in July 2007 for July 2007 to June 2008, they skimped on some workshops and hired new teachers a little late. That's why the money was left over.
c. This money is left over from overall budget of $54000. Asha Austin supported $17000.
d.The general consensus is to let them keep and use the money and that the money used for the same activities that it was approved for. 12 votes for, 1 Abstain.
e.
Murali to upload documents to the project page.
4.Role of UT Asha -Mohit
a.
Add Friends of Asha and UT Asha information to Asha Austin website.
b.UT Asha will continue to have a separate P O Box. This is free of cost given to each student organization.
c. One suggestion that came up was to actually have a bank account in UT that will also enable us to raise funds and get grants on campus and recruit more volunteers from among students.
d.Confirm if the internet money (registration fee in our case) needs to go to a UT account? (Ganesh)
e.
Can we find a volunteer
to open a UT account and be the treasurer? (Mohit)
f. If internet money does NOT have to go to UT, then we are ok with Prelims at UT as long as we do not collect money at the door.
g. If internet money going to Asha account is NOT ok then an easy way is to refund prelims registration amount and collect money later for Showcase only OR have Prelims at a different venue OR open a UT account and get the internet money here.
5.Asha Samajik Vidyalaya- Ganesh
The budget for ASV was approved through online poll (INR 306,850/-)
6.Bone marrow drive for Manish at Show of
Hope- Charanya
Show of Hope committee to discuss and decide on it