Meeting Minutes 10/12/08

Attendees: Karthik, Murali, Bharath, Ganesh, Gaurav, Ranga, Saurabh, Savitha, Bhaskar, Sais, Rahul, Mohit, Bhavna

1.Prajnalaya – Ganesh
2.Khushboo Welfare Society – Ranga/Saurabh
3.Show of Hope – Savitha

1. Prajnalaya – Ganesh
     - Half yearly report from the school
     - Bharath gave a brief introduction to the project
     - Last year there was a storm which heavily damaged the school, some of the expenses to provide relief was supported by Austin

    Q. Who works on the organic fertilizer project? Kids or local community?
    A. A couple of local farmers are helping in this effort. Kids are going to be part of it as vocational training.

    Q. What is the age of the children?
    A. 5- 14 years old

    Q. Who will be using the organic fertilizer?
    A. It is going to be used by the local tea gardens and estates.

     - They expect to make Rs 16,000 this year from the sales of the organic fertilizer – 1600 kgs
     - Savitha – A similar set up exists at the Bharathi Trust Resource Center. The amount of work required after the initial setup is quite minimal.
     - Ganesh presented Q&A's from Prajnalaya – http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=803
     - They do not have a consistent source of funding
     - District Rural Development Agency and Chief Minister's relief fund
     - Prajanalaya has applied for FCRA but we have not heard what happened after that?
     - As a chapter we are comfortable disbursing the second installment after talking to Vallabh

    Questions
     - What is the girl: boy ratio?
     - Where is the girl hostel located?
     - What do kids do in the 10th grade?
     - What has happened to the FCRA application?
     - How do Friends of Assam support Prajnalaya?

    Action Item
     - Talk to Vallabh/Biju about how to support the project
     - Get Ankur to present updates at chapter meeting

2. Khushboo Welfare Society – Ranga/Saurabh
     - Ranga gave an overview about the project
     - Saurabh has visited the project in Dec 2007 and he will talk about his visit
     - They support 60 kids coming to the school and about 100 people visiting the outpatient clinic
     - Asha Austin has received a proposal to support the teacher salaries – Rs. 14,21,232/-
     - They have a locally run Support-a-Child programs

    Saurabh's visit
    - Surprised at the kind of infrastructure they have in place
    - They have a huge area to support 60 – 80 children – but it made sense after visiting the premises
    - The surrounding area is very expensive – located in Gurgaon
    - They got the land at a subsidized rate – which they have managed to pay off now
    - They still have an outstanding loan to pay off one of the buses
    - They had vocational therapy units – sewing, stitching, candle-making, greeting cards, calendars, music classes, etc
    - Age of children – starting from 10
    - They teach the children everyday skills
    - He took a lot of pictures and videos – not sure where it is stored now
    - Saw some of the children while they were having a physio-therapy session
    - Went in the morning at 10 am and stayed there for 4 to 5 hours

    Q. Were the teachers experienced?
    A. It seemed that the teachers knew what they were doing

    Q. Each kid has a tailored program?
    A. It may not be exactly individual programs, but programs were made for each group of three or four kids

    Q. How was the school started?
    A. Three people got together and started the school with 10 children.
        These people had children who needed special education and there was no school nearby.

    2 - 3 rooms were for the office and administrative functions

    Q. What was the background of the kids?
    A. It was very hard to communicate with the kids. The background is mixed – children come from radius of 20 km.

    Q. Do parents come to school with the kids?
    A. Not sure about that.

    Q. What is the student-teacher ratio ?
    A. 5:1

    School runs from 9 am to 1:30 pm

    Q. What is the outpatient therapy?
    They have 4 different divisions – early intervention (upto 6 year old), school (children 6–15 year olds), vocational training (only after 15 years) and severe retardation case. The oupatient therapy refers to the early intervention scheme.

    Q. Why did you visit the organization?
    A. Bharath had asked Saurabh to visit the organization because KWS was looking for support

    Q. Were you expecting anything when you visited KWS?
    A. I was surprised at how specialized the therapy was for each child. Provided individual attention to all kids.

    Q. Are they still taking in kids? On what basis do they take kids? First-come first serve?
    A. At one point they had a waiting list but it might have been in 2006. They probably try to accommodate all children. The limit could be infrastructure or it could be number of teachers.

    - They will need about Rs 2 crore in a corpus fund to support their running expenses
    - Ranga showed some pictures from the school
    - So what is the next step? We need to make a site-visit to the project.
    - Discussion about organizations having a corpus fund – pros/cons
    - We can look at the amount of corpus at the end of next year.
    - Ranga will get the exact line-items by consulting KWS
    - Asha Austin is going to support KWS for $10,000 for the year 2008-09
        Yes:       9
        No:        0
       Abstain: 0

    Action Items
    Q. Are the kids on the list enrolled first-come first served?

3. Show of Hope – Savitha
- Need to work on project presentations for the final show
    - Videos, slide-shows,
    - Instrument and vocals should not go together
    - 3 minutes is too less time for performance – sitar is an example