ASHA Meeting
July 23, 2005
 
I. Orphanage Questions
1)How much time do they have to find out when the decisions will
happen? Time on hand?
2)Who are they paying rent to and what actual changes have they seen
since the insolvency?
 
 
II. Trip Report – Sri Natyananda School, Jigani by Subramanian Ramamoorthy
1.School building made fro the land army. Elementary and middle school
to start with and now expanding to high school (1994).
2.Total of 1300 students that are coming from govt. schools. When you
join, you give 500 rupees. But we don't know who paid and who didn't
as some of them cannot afford to pay the 500.
3.But there are problems:
a.Infrastructure
i.They have not enough space and have to turn away some of the
students that come. Turn away people in the high school setting. Far
more students in the high school than in elementary school and middle
school.
b.Not very good cash flow to pay their teachers.
c.Displaced classrooms - Some of the classes taking place in the
outside and not always on good weather days.
d.Proposal - They have land and want to construct classrooms.
e.Cost estimate: 4 new classrooms, 0.25 acres and 1 classroom costs 2.9 lakhs.
f.6-8 teachers who come from the government so their salary is
guaranteed. But the others do not have a guarantee of getting paid.
g.They are registered by the govt. The only aid is the pay for the
teachers. It is just a govt. aided school and not a govt. run school.
h.How does an aided school work in the rural area? – To be asked
i.Salaries are really low. The principal gets lower than the
government teachers. The principal is more of an administrator than a
principal and deals with external affairs.
j.What can we do help the teachers?
i.We can explore support a teacher
ii.Jigani is about 1.5 hours away from Bangalore and more people are
uneducated and the economy is not really booming. The industrial
estate people have been having problems and the local community has
been against the industry taking away. So the idea is the school will
provide a way for the kids to get an education and not be a source of
friction in the future so that we can jobs of them. They never said it
but perceived as such.
iii.How do they get money? The school is the only nice place in the
village. But the industry does not provide a source of income for the
people.
iv.Tensions?
1.Since the villagers were not being employed by the industries, they
were against them.
2.Also the villagers went to the industrialists and said not give them
money, they will do stuff.
3.Are resources being taken? Not really and not affecting the village
directly. So started with a lot of labor. But unrest by people who
don't get employed. So problems like that will always there between
the industry and the labor.
4.The headmaster said that the community is not giving enough support
of the school
5.What does the community do? - To be asked!
6.After the industries came, there used to be cows and cattle. The
industrialists made the water tanks for the cows.
7.Is that main industry (stone cutters)? – To be asked
8.The industrialists have interest in educating the people as they
will ask like future labor force for the industries.
9.They do not have a main economy right now. There are some of them
who are working on farming.
10.What are the alumni doing? The ones that are really successful,
they move to Bangalore and go to a reg. college. Some of them set up
shops and do that. Don't know how many work in the industries.
11.What is the curriculum? Government curriculum.
12.In Bangalore, what is the area that the govt. must have primary and
secondary school? What is the area? – To be asked
13.They do have a govt. primary school in this village.
14.Having this huge divide in the salary of the government appointed
teachers and other teachers will be an issue for sure.
15.In these aided school, the trust runs the school and they have to
report to the trust.
16.What is the teacher retention rate? – To be asked
17.Is this externally supported?
a.Yes it is. Some by the industrialists and the trust.
b.They are not supported by any organization like Asha etc.
c.They do have individuals in the US who are funding this
18.We need to look into the salary issue before anything.
19.What is stopping them from being a government school? What is the
required work? – To be asked
20.Who is Nityananda Swami? – To be asked
21.Eventually the goal is to have a PUC college
22.They also have the problem of the girl dropping out after 10th
grade as they cannot go to Bangalore for the PUC. So if they have that
then the girls can just go there.
23.Where is the closest high school?
24.For PUC etc., people would go to Bangalore (higher studies)
25.What % of the people who go to the school? – To be asked
 
III. Marathon
1.August 28th is the info. Session
2.Set up the website – to be created
3.Website to be created before the session, maybe in 2-3 weeks.
4.Templates from the Silicon Valley Website?
5.Vinod to ask Hiral about the website
6.Have a web team for this?
7.The runner can log in and enter information about their training.
8.Publicity:
a.Theaters
b.Gyms
c.Restaurants
d.Get in touch with Steve
e.Banner – General Asha banner
f.Billboard - $350/month. They will also prepare the billboard for
$95. Near town lake. Worth investing. Size: 12X40
9.Madhav and Pradeep have a CD on fund raising and runner handbook
10.Have team and group targets ready before hand
11.Have a marathon funds raised graph
12.Starting this weekend, we should have water stalls – Saturday and
Sunday Morning.
13.Banner on the water table.