Attendees: Arvind, Anita, Gaurav, Avyakta, Gayathri,
Saravanan,
Sandhya, Anitha, Vinay, Santhosh, Sanjeev, and Vinod
I) Narmada Petition.
Gayathri played a video and presented the issue. The overall situation
was presented and Gayathri answered all questions presented.
Asha Austin endorses the narmada petition
http://petitions.aidindia.org/narmada/
Anita and Anitha will be Asha Austin custodians to pursue the
Narmada struggle and keep everyone informed and further the knowledge, learning
and feedback in the chapter.
II) Asha Shikshan Sansthan.
Sanjeev gave background on ASS.
- Spoke to Vallabh. The teachers had come to Varanasi and stayed
for a day at the center and they had discussions about the shed. For now they
have decided not going ahead with the tin-shed:
-
Kishore, one of the teachers has offered his house with is next to
the land for keeping the office supplies.
-
The land belongs to KishoreÕs father and it is not considered
appropriate to continue building on the land till the land is purchased or
donated to the organization.
- Need to figure out finance for next year and see if we need
$10/child/month or lesser for support-a-child program.
- Additional 25 children will be joining the school starting next
academic year.
- Asha has a conference for all itÕs chapters every two years. In
the conference we discuss about different activities that chapters are
participating in. These include discussion on issues like fund-raising,
projects, social issues, site visits, volunteer retention, asha-computers and
so on.
- Do we want to take up organizing the conference?
- Things involved in organizing include travel, accomodation,
food,
sessions for about 120 people.
- Ticket prices for people to travel to Austin could be a little
more expensive than other places and may be difficult to convince people to
come here.
- One advantage is that it makes us aware of so many different areas that each of us finds what we are looking for and helps to re-energize/grow the chapter
- Accommodation should not be a problem - Gayathri (from AID
conference in Austin experience)
- Should invite people from India
- Need to convince people to come to Austin - that could be the
biggest challenge!!
- Publicity is very important - needs to be done like an event
- Have a conference call with Asha Chicago - who organized last
year's conference
IV) Delta Epsilon Phi
- We have been invited to have a stall with games for children.
1800 kids will be at the event.
9-10 - Vinod, Sanjeev
11-12 - Gaurav, Vinay
12-1 - Santhosh,
Anita
1-2 -
Sandhya, Anita
Folks on campus please help Khusbu, Vivin, Ganesh, Ram.
- Sanjeev background on Mehdiganj struggle and Lok Samiti.
- issues of lack-of-water/pollution/lack-of-local-employment
- Faxes to the government : ask Nandlal who to send the faxes to?
(Gaurav)
- Please join mehdiganj@yahoogroups.com : lots of things happening
and spans multiple organizations. Send mail to
mehdiganj-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Webpage for the chapter, linking mehdiganj page to the asha
webpage: Sanjeev
- Shareholders meeting: a few AID and CAI volunteers went to the
meeting and asked about the mehdiganj issue got some contacts to ask our
questions and get official answers.
- Some numbers on their RWH and water usage
- Network with other groups Š amnesty international and make them
aware of the issues
- We all should call coke with the rap sheet Ani sent out and ask
them to give us numbers to bring up our concerns constructively.
- Present shira wolf doc : Sandhya