When: April 27th 2006 at 16:00 hrs

Hi folks,
Rohini thanx for calling Vijaykumar Singh. I did attend the discussion. 
Basically it revoloved around the 93rd amendment and SSA(sarv siksha abhiyaan) which talks of free education for all 
children till 14yrs of age. TOI had a meeting on the same with governement officials a few days back and NGOs were the next 
group they wanted to involve and get inputs from..meaning how we can contribute to improving the quality of education under
the SSA.
A representative from the world bank,Department for international development and education -british high commission (both 
have together contributed 33% of the funding for SSA) and Swami Agnivesh(i think he'z an ex-education minister) and arnd 15 
other NGOs attended this discussion and ofcouse TOI chairperson Mrs. Indu. 
I shared with them Uday bhaiya's idea of making the school the hub of cultural and other activities in the rural areas, 
which found lot of ears. Also our view that the government has the policies and the money but whats wanting is the follow 
up and monitoring was backed by many. 
Anyhow I was still the youngest and soon the grey haired started hogging all the attention and the discussion revolved 
around their field/ground level experiences.
Whatever, the conclusion was the have formed a 'task force' of a handful of eager and sincere NGOs commited to making a 
difference and two very senior ppl from the educational department Govt of india and also TOI..Aim is to find ways in which 
NGOs can actively participate in formulating and implementing the SSA. I gave our name too. They plan to meet on the 5th of May.
Folks I feel this is a great opportunity to actually make a diffenence..we have both the government and the media on our 
side and funding shouldn't be a problem courtesy world bank and Education,UK british high commission.
 
Besides the meeting, here'z what we need:
Visiting cards!! we need these badly. Rest is cool. Btw many ppl didnt know abt asha so better work on being noticed if we 
wanna be taken seriuosly.

Anirudh Saronwala