Asha Meeting Minutes:
01/27/08
Attended by: Savitha, Suhasini, Abhinav, Gaurav, Itisha, Santhosh,
Ganesh, Shekhar, Bharath, Sharanya, Vinod.
[I] Asha Fellows Conference -- Gaurav.
Detailed minutes of the conference is posted at the
conference
website. http://www.ashanet.org/fellowsh
Gaurav attended the Asha Fellows Conference held at Bharathi Trust in
late December. Asha Austin supports two Fellows -- Siddamma and
Nandlal Master. The 3-day conference was held at the BT Resource
Center. It was attended by 30 folks -- 14 fellows, 11 volunteers, and
3 invited speakers.
The conference was very interactive. Topics covered in the conference
were:
Domestic violence and counseling
SEZs
Activity-based learning
Vocational training and schooling
Land Reforms
NREGA
Agrarian crisis and organic farming
Organizing people (wrt Irulas)
Water management
RTI
Austin had supported the building of the check dams. The check dams
are working really well, and the wells have filled up. The check dams
are also a very social place, where everyone hangs out. In fact one of
the conference session was held at one of the check dams.
Dr. Nammalwar who used to be an agricultural scientist is the key
organic farming researcher and promoter in the resource center. He
presented some of his methods and the values of organic food.
Discussion on quarry at the Resource Center. More discussion on how
the resource center works, and what they grow and what they rotate
(crops) and how they sell etc. Gaurav showed a lot of pictures from
his visit. There were many fun activities as part of the conference,
singing around the bon-fire etc.
Nammalwar writes a lot of his research and methods in Tamil. He has a
very simple way of explaining his methods to the farmers. He used
natural methods to de-salinate the lands after the Tsunami (received a
presidential award for this). Siddamma is trying to get him to
document his learning.
[II] Movie on Autism.