Attendees : Gaurav, Charanya, Bharath, Savitha, Ganesh, Murali, Saurabh

Gyanodaya :

• Introduction about Gyanodaya
• 115 children in the hostel (residential)
• 700 leprosy colonies in India
• Food and books are free
• To integrate nearby community, day scholars from mearby 86 children come as day-scholar to study here
• 10 acres of land near community: food material,rice etc for the school provided by it
• Semi-urban area : access road of 3km leads to this place on the highway between chennai and chengalpet.
• SEZ issues from Mahindra
• 60% of students are from TN and remaining from other states
• Asha Madison also supports this
• Padma Venkatraman, daughter of late Dr.Venkatraman helped Santhosh with information. She visits once a month.
• Follow state government school syllabus.
• 2 celebrations happended this year : Independence day and Diwali.

Issues:

• Number of students from nearby villages is reducing because of fear of picking up leprosy over time
• Work with AID for improving the library
• After 5th grade, non-leprosy kids tend to move to government school
  18 kids in 9th standard all these in hostels.
• Difficult to get teachers , particularly females
• Software park affecting  the salary scale in that area.
• Power cut problems recently.
• Water tank broke down ; 2 water coolers may help

· Washing machine may help since 1st and 2nd std school are finding difficulty to help since young kids cant wash clothes easily

· Question:

• Is it possible to get more female teachers to stay in the school/colony itself
• Are the report cards available for the students?
• Field trip discussion: Who spends for it? Bharath to clarify.
• No computer in this place; do u need one?

· Need to look at supporting higher education: would be good to discuus this further,