21 Jul 08 Attendees: Rajat, Sanjeev, Naveen, Sridhar, Manohar, Sharad, Divya, Ram 1) Overview of asha projects and Q & A about asha. http://www.ashanet.org/projects/chapter-view.php?a=31 2) Thulir Discussion: In Sittlingi, Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu. Around 6 hrs from Bangalore. Asha has worked with Anu and Krishna over the last few yrs through the fellowship program. The asha fellowship program provides an avenue of supporting individuals who we believe can have a larger impact in society. Anu and Krishna are architects by profession. After graduation they decided to work in the alternate sector and work on low-cost and local construction. They were at Gandhigram where they met Regi and Lalita. A good part of the 17 yrs was spent in Guddalore with and organization called Accord. Here they worked on training groups and masons in various methods of construction based on different available materials. In 2000, they decided to work in a small scale on education and also home school their children. At this time they visited many educational efforts through out the country to learn from and visited Vigyan Ashram at Pabal. Here is a talk from Krishna that talks a little more about the Pabal experiment. In the mean time Regi and Lalita had started THI(Tribal Health Initiative) to cater to the health care needs of the tribal community around Sittlingi. Over the last 14 yrs THI has grown beyond primary healthcare and includes a hospital including operating rooms and a network of village workers that work on womens groups, income generation, organic farming. Thulir was functioning as an educational outreach program of THI. Over time the activities of Thulir have grown and administrative efforts on THI were becoming difficult and about six months back Thulir ware registered as a trust of it's own. Activities at Thulir are in three areas a) create an educational resource center for the children in the village to grow and learn, b) work with the youth on a basic technology course where they learn a variety of skills like construction, electrical fittings, plumbing, electronics, computers, wood work, spoken English, etc. c) they also help drop out children in grade 10th to clear any papers they have not been able to. a) & b) was by choice, c) was a response to a need expressed by the community. The conditions at the valley have been changing rapidly with the valley being connected to larger towns/cities like Salem by road. While this has opened some opportunities, it has also resulted in the villagers being faced with different kinds of exploitation. Thulir believes that balanced and educated choices can help overcome and avoid such exploitation. In a sense, this is what Thulir hopes to accomplish helping children and youth make educated choices and live a good quality of life. An informal network called 'Friends of Sittlingi' that supports THI has also been supporting Thulir's activities from time to time. With the formalization of the organization they are also hoping to formalize the support they get and encourage some of the youth who have learnt at the organization with taking up the roles of responsibility and interact and train other youth in the villages in aspects they are good at. The proposal is available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asha-blr/files/Projects/Proposals/Thulir/ Questions & Discussion - Is the support to scale their activities up or to sustain their activities? A: Sustain their activities. The scale is only coming in the variety of skiils they are offering e.g. maintaining LED streetlights installing solar panels, etc. - It would be good to get a complete picture of all their activities e.g. What has their plans? Why they require help with 20-30 kids for a couple of hrs? What do they need Perumal for? How have things changed from when they handled the activities? A: It was decided that we can all plan to visit Sittlingi and get a picture of the activities and take up some of these questions with Anu and Krishna then. Given that a few volunteers from Blr have spent some time at Thulir there was some discussion of taking up this project as an Asha stars project. Asha stars are individuals who take up the responsibility of raising funds for the project partial or complete over the years and track the success of the project. More on asha stars http://www.ashanet.org/projects/asha-stars/ Other questions: - Do they charge fees? No - Why not? - Why is the support given to the old students called a fellowship? Will it be rotating i.e. students will spend some time train others and leave? 2) The government schools are now running a remedial education program that is an after school-school to help children who are considered weak. One of the asha employed teachers has expressed inability to also be part of this program by mentioning health and other reasons for the long hrs. However, the Principal has decided that she should do it. How do we handle this? - Talk to the Principal and then decide the steps further. 3) We will start the asha-hour(s) in one of the two government schools we work with. - This would be twice a month 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Sat. The system will be based of rotation, volunteers can step up for one weekend based on their availability. 4) Ram was taking a few hrs of spoken English to 10 teachers from government schools. This was at Saaraki – Banshankari. The teachers are very enthusiastic and it would be great if this can continue while Ram is in Puvidham. - Volunteers? 5) We have been getting 2-3 requests a month for support. How do we handle this? - Unless a volunteer visits a project we don't get the feel for it and we have avoided discussing it. Given this we should let the organization know that only if a volunteer is interested and visits the place we can take this forward to get a proposal. Basic information of the project in terms of location and a small overview is enough to circulate in asha-blr as well as pwg for this and will be all that is requested. 6) How do we handle internship requests? - Suggest 4) – individual from Jain college, Basavankudi. 7) There is a need for low power LED based lighting in Puvidham - Sanjeev to follow up. 8) Asha-India bi-annual meeting. There was very little representation from beyond UP. The next meeting will be in Puvidham, more of us can try to participate as well as get a chance to learn about the project.