Meeting Minutes 08/17/08
Attendees: Arun, Bharath, Ganesh, Gaurav, Savitha, Charanya, Itisha, Raghav, Mohit, Bhavna
1.Discussion on the General
Funds Disbursal (Arun)
(http://data.ashanet.org/datastore/data/Projects/Proposal_for_GF_disbursal_Aug_06_2008.ppt)
· Goal is to disburse the $600000 in the General Funds over the next 3 years.
· There are 5 proposed options to select from. They are:
1.
Divide the general funds sum equally among all
eligible chapters that request portion of general funds in any given year (slide 4)
2. The general funds will be disbursed between two types of projects, those that are large-scale innovative & those at the chapters which qualify on account of experiencing a funding shortfall.
3. Hybrid of option 1 and 2 – set aside a portion of the money for Emergency relief, spend a portion on large-scale innovative and scalable projects and divide the remaining portion between all eligible chapters that request funds in any given year.
4. Chapter can submit their own proposal.
5. Chapter
does vote.
·
2. Bharathi
Trust Update (Savitha)
· Savitha gave a background on Sidamma and the Bharathi Trust
· Asha Austin had to provide a letter from the chapter saying
that the funds we contributed to purchase the farming land for Bharathi Trust was geared towards organic farming
development and was not something dedicated to the Irula
members in order to help Siddamma resolve a dispute in
the local Panchayat– this letter has been
provided and the issue has now been resolved.
3. Nammalvar Fellowship (Gaurav/Vinod)
· Gaurav gave a background about Nammalvar
– a new fellow that the Austin Asha chapter is
considering supporting.
· Information about Nammalvar can be found here:
http://data.ashanet.org/datastore/data/Focusgroups/Fellowships/Proposals/Approved/Nammalvar/
· Asha Austin along with AID
· According
to the Fellowship agreement, Asha will support Nammalvar for a minimum commitment of 3 years. A full
review will be done after each year to track updates.
· Nammalvar plans to do 2 types of training over the next year.
− Train the actual farmers
− Train
the Trainer: where he trains individuals who will then be able to train others.
· Most
of Nammalvar’s knowledge about organic farming
methods have not been well-documented for easy
knowledge dispersal. One of the main goals in the upcoming year will be to
transcribe his knowledge into information booklets – first in Tamil, and
then translated to English.
· Nammalvar also plans to work with partner NGOs at the
regions he visits who will help re-translate to their local languages.
Currently his plan is to cover mostly villages in
Questions:
· What happens if AID is not able to support?
à Asha will either consider
full funding or ask for assistance from other chapters.
· How will Nammalvar’s efforts be track and progress monitored?
à Through partnership with the NGOs who will track
the success of the organic farming methods he teaches – over the next 3
yrs.
·
4. Show of
Hope Updates (Savitha)
· Dates
and Venues have been decided.
· Registraton costs/format still TBD.
· Team
has several sub-committees – suggestion was made to reduce the total
number of unique points of contact.
· Publicity
efforts have started – a lot of interest shown at both ICC and ATS events
last weekend.
· A
blurb about Show of Hope will also be included in this month’s issue of
the South Asian Magazine.
· Event
website is www.showofhope.com – this is
currently not affiliated to the Asha website. Suggestion
was made to keep a backup of the information in the Asha
servers for future use.
· Show
of Hope has set up a toll-free numbers which people can call to make inquiries.
· Savitha will send a txt version of the flyer for email
publicity