Meeting
Minutes 11/30/08
Attendees: Murali, Ganesh, Rahul, Bharath, Gaurav, Ranga, Savitha, Bhaskar, Jith
1. Gramin Shiksha Kendra – Murali
2.
RMKM –
Murali
3.
Flash
Flood Updates- Savitha
4.
Asha Fellows Conference
– Savitha
1. Gramin
Shiksha
Kendra – Murali
- Updates from the school
- There are two schools one has permanent structures and other does not
- Villagers helped in building the school structures
- Santhosh (an Asha-Bangalore volunteer) visited the school recently
-GSK wants to work on some infrastructure projects.
- Building toilets for the children at the first school, Jaganpura. Total cost of Rs 80,000 with Rs 30,000 out of that from local support.
- At Bodal, the school needs basic infrastructure like classrooms etc first
- Electricity connection is another thing they want.
Demand Notice - Rs. 86000,
Fittings and appliances - Rs. 30,000.
Local contributions of up to 16,000 rupees.
Drinking water setup. Pump and fittings - 75,000, Plumbing - 25000.
- Total support needed ~ Rs 250,000.
- There are 225 children in this school
- Children didn't have a proper toilet to go to.
Q. What about water right now?
- They have a small kitchen right now and they get water from outside.
Q. Will they have to pay a monthly
amount for the water and electricity?
Q. Do schools get a subsidy for water and electric bills?
- This place is 16 kms from Sawai Madhopar and caters to a farming village. There were no pucca roads but this year they have a semi pucca road. The school is next to the village road.
Q. What is the condition of
electricity and water in the villages?
Q. What will be the effect of the
RTE Bill on this particular school?
- Murali gave a brief introduction to the Bill
- The Bill requires some things to be mandatory which need to be implemented with in three years
- Maneesh thinks they already follow most of what is already prescribed - pucca structure in one place, good student-teacher ratio, they have the school management committee with parents participating, teachers are well qualified with at least a B.Ed degree.
Separate toilets is one of the requirements.
- The Bill talks of 4 acres for each school. What does it mean foe existing schools?
- The school follows their own curriculum and the plan is to mainstream the children at the 8th or 10th grade.
- Maneesh spoke to Santhosh at length about the infrastructure expenses.
Asha
Austin approves Rs.
2,50,000 towards the
school infrastructure expenses
Yes:
8
No:
0
Abstain: 0
- Murali showed the
progress report for a child who
has been around since 2004. It is uploaded on the project page.
2. RMKM – Murali
- Murali gave a brief introduction to the project - Day School and Community based Rehabilitation
- There are 126 children in the school, with half of them being mentally challenged.
- Questions from the previous meeting were answered
- Murali showed newsletters and pamphlets/brochures they had printed. Asha Austin supported part of these expenses.
- Murali to upload the material to the project webpage.
- Rajesh visited the project in April, Zankhana will visit the project sometime next month, Bala (AID volunteer) might visit the project sometime soon
- Looked at the budget requirements for this year
- All special educators need to have a certification
- They take children on exposure trips - something like field trips - once to planetarium in Jaipur and another a visit to Pushkar Mela in Ajmer
Q. Do the challenged children feel
intimidated by the "normal" children?
A. The challenged children have special bridge classes at the end of the day. The school is only till grade 5, and probably the differences are lesser perceived then.
Q. What are the working hours of the
children?
- The "normal" children get main-streamed in govt. school and some of the challenged children are also mainstreamed.
- They have a vocational center unit which many of the children end up joining.
Q. Can they add more students?
A. They can add CBR workers but they can’t add more students to the school.
Q. What is the coverage of the CBR
worker?
A. It is almost the entire district with rural coverage too, some maybe as far as 20 kms.
- Only the challenged children go through the vocational training
Q. What percentage of children get mainstreamed?
A. It was in their proposal and something around 8 out of 12.
- In the case of the CBR workers, they have to work with adults sometimes and is very challenging work.
- Around 230 kids are supported through the CBR program.
Q. What is the M/F ratio for the CBR?
A. In the school it was 69/47 in the school. Do not have the number for the CBR children
- Women rights are especially bad in Rajasthan. This might contribute
to the
skewed male/female ratios in schools there.
- There are 4 CBR teachers and each is responsible for about 60 children
- The CBR workers primarily work with the families to help them
- In the beginning they need to spend a lot of time working with these children and over time this is reduced as the teaching progresses.
- When children get better, some of them join the vocational training unit and some have gotten jobs
Q. What constrains the budget?
A. It is primarily the resources.
According to their survey, about 3% of the children may have some
developmental
disability. They estimate about 60,000 children needing help in and
around
- About 30 kids in the CBR program pay a token amount.
Q. Do the CBR workers have any
periodic training?
Q. How many in a class-room? student-teacher ratio?
A. 126 children - 8 teachers and some special educators too. Shristi has a much lower student-teacher ratio.
Q. How are the pamphlets
distributed?
A. They organize a few fairs/melas and they also do street plays and hand out information to the people and also through the CBR program. This is part of the community mobilization.
Q. How many people showed up for
these community mobilization events?
Q. So in these programs, do they
publicize their other efforts?
- RMKM got an award for the best NGO in Rajasthan
-
Fundraising is
hard in
- The main industry is tourism, handicrafts and agriculture
Q. How are special educators
different from vocational teachers?
A. They are different programs. Special
educators are meant for teaching curriculum.
- There are only special educators though the project-manager is also a special educator
Q. Why is the ratio so low for
special educators?
Q. How many of the children pay for
schooling?
Asha
Austin approves Rs.
500700 towards expenses for the year August 2008 - July 2009
Yes:
9 No:
0
Abstain: 0
3. Flash Flood Updates – Savitha
- Cyclone Nisha hit Tamil Nadu.
- Some villages which were affected have been supported in various capacities by Asha in the past - supported EMC's in different villages
- Govt support will come in only after a week or so
- Siddamma immediately used Rs 50,000 towards this relief effort
Q. How do we track the money?
A. Last year a similar thing happened but flood was not of this magnitude. The requirement was very small last year. May have to wait for more time till more information comes in.
- We had supported around $2000 for Prajnalaya
from
which we have not received any updates about how the money was used
Q. Can we connect with organizations
in TN for support?
Q. How does Siddamma
find support for the rest of the requirements?
- Need help with medicines. Jith will help.
- Savitha contacted IIT for a clothes drive
- AID Chennai has a very strong network in TN
- TN govt. providing 100 crore as relief
- Amount needed per family is about Rs 1500
- Do the food amounts make sense?
-
Savi to contact AID
Options that exist –
i. Relief page
ii. Contact other chapters
iii. Asha Austin supports: $2000 in addition
Asha
Austin supports $2000 towards the
flood relief efforts
Yes:
5 No:
3 Abstain:
0
4. Asha
Fellows Conference
- Siddamma and Nammalvar
wanted to travel to the Asha
Fellows Conference but
they were wondering if they could fly to
- Discussion was not completed because of time.