Meeting minutes
03/08/07
Bharath, Santhosh, Vinod, Bhavna,
1.
- In past, we
have supported the teachers’ salary because SSA requires teachers trained for
handling mentally challenged/ autistic children and it is usually difficult to
find such teachers.
- SSA submitted
a new proposal to Vinod when he visited them in
Jan’07.
- Vinod talked to SSA last week, and clarified few details
about the proposal:
o Currently they have 1 bldg – ‘old bldg’.
o They are working to acquire funds for total 3 new bldgs.
o Most of the therapy unites except two will be moved to new
bldg [1].
o New bldg [2] will house autism therapy unit.
o iFlex Solutions is helping them
by covering infrastructural costs.
o Proposal to Asha is for new bldg
[3]. It will house occupational therapy unit.
§ Total Budget : $27,500
· Recurring
Cost: $11,500/year
· Fixed Cost
(one time): $16,000
o Once they have new bldgs, ‘old
bldg’ will be used for vocational training.
o After
occupational therapy (<14 yrs) kids go to pre-vocational training (14-18
yrs), where they learn different skills and identify the skills they are good
at, and then they move to vocational training with one or two specific skill(s)
(18+ yrs)
§ But this age
grouping is not a hard consideration, it depends more on kids’ overall
development.
o SSA plans to hire new people to run this additional unit,
it is also a part of recurring cost in the proposal.
o Last year, vocational training unit had profit margin of ~
Rs 60,000.
- We have few
options to fund this new proposal:
o Submit this project proposal to Work an hour (WAH)
§ WAH is online
fundraiser event for Asha worldwide. Starts on July
4th and runs till Sep. 5th. WAH program encourages donors to donate one hour of
salary. This year, it is being organized by a team consisting of
representatives of different Asha chapters. All the
money will come to one pool, and then money will be divided to different
projects as per requirements. Vinod and Santhosh are part of this team from Asha,
Austin.
§ We should
expect ~4-5k fundraising through WAH since the money will be divided into
roughly 10-12 projects.
§ With WAH
alone, we can’t fulfill budget requirements of this proposal.
o WAH + Asha,
o Asha,
- Vibha is also picking up SSA to make it a spotlight
project. Not sure what aspects they want to support.
- March 12th
is deadline to submit project to WAH team.
- In one of the
meetings, we decided to select either SSA or GSK for WAH.
- Vinod’s suggestion – Some other Asha
chapters run by universities ( Princeton , Minnesota etc. ) are in need of
money for their projects since WAH is the only main fundraiser for them, and
given WAH is going to generate ~4k, WAH funds alone will not to be sufficient
to cover either fixed or recurring cost of this proposal. So, it is better to
come up with some other sources and we should not submit SAA to WAH
- We will have
follow-up discussion to finalize our vote in next meeting–
o Vinod will gather inputs from Vibha, other Asha chapters for
funds.
o We will also consider GSK for the vote.
2. U. Shrinivas Concert (Notes of Hope 2007) -
- Team of 4: U.
Shrinivas, his brother, and two associates for Tabla and Mridangam.
o Concert will be inclined to classical and not fusion.
-
o Sept-Oct is expected timeline.
o 4-5 main vols for 2-3 months;
10-15 vols on the day of event.
o $7-9k (including travel + accommodation) .
- Inputs from
IFA
o They did it twice.
o 250 people first time, 500 people next time.
o Only way to make more money to get it sponsored, tickets
alone will not help that much.
o He performed in
- Should we
host this concert?
o Yes-0, No-7, Abstain-0
§ Comments: not
enough vol bandwidth to be able to do marathon and
this event simultaneously in Fall, total cost of event is very high,
difficult to breakeven just by tickets, sponsorship is good idea but we will
rather do it for our marathon program – Strides of Hope (SoH)
3. Odanadi Project Proposal - Vinod
Vinod gave us brief background.
- Located just
outside
- Institute for
girls who are forced into prostitution.
- Involved in
rescuing attempts, another aspect is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation involves
medication and counseling, involved with the education of younger children
(usually children of sex workers and orphans picked off the streets).
- Up to 7th
std., they are taught informal education provided by Odanadi.
Then kids move to high school through statewide exams.
- It started in
1990 by two journalists; most of the initial funds came from local donors, now
81 girls & 20 boys in campus.
- They cover
nearby 5 districts including
- Asha started working with them since 2000. Many Asha chapters (DC, Dallas,
- Manavi, cooperative organization is also involved with Odanadi. Through Manavi, girls
train to run their own small-scale businesses. One of the success stories has
been beauty salons. Another example is enrollment in driving schools to start
travel agency. One of the girls got a job with a hospital to drive ambassador.
- After
rescuing attempts, they try to get in touch with the families of girls. There
have been cases where families didn’t want to take girls back, but few of them
returned to families, Odanadi has also helped some
girls to get married.
- Separate
efforts to educate folks to understand their rights by forming Village
Vigilance Committee. It consists of village youth; focus is on village
activities. Odanadi arranges workshops for
committees. Information on penal code, how to file FIR, identify roles in
community etc. -- are some of the agenda items of these workshops.
- Odanadi has proposals for a new hostel for boys,
food/clothing etc. Vinod will continue this
discussion in next meeting