Atendees:
Anupam, Rahul, Sai, Shubh, Mrs. Ranu Mahanti, Mr. Mahanti, Giri, Aliveni, Annam, Ganesh(his last meeting before going to India for good), Mad

Anupam and Rahul are new volunteers and we are very happy to have them with us.

Orissa Project:
Mrs. Mahanti gave us a very good over view of her project in orissa. She was brought up in Sambalpur, Orissa. This project is for villages in Western part of orissa, which she thinks, is usually neglected. She is in touch with another local NGO named BISWA, whom she feels, is doing good work there.

She has been in touch with them through email and sometimes through phone calls. BISWA has so far has been answering all her queries very promptly. She has been in touch with BISWA for the past 6 months or so but BISWA has been there for 7 years. The secretary of BISWA is well educated and has a very good work style. They have about 32 emoployees. The each employee is responsible for 4 or 5 villages. These employees have to find one or
two active people in the villages they are responsible for to carry on their work in their villages. These volunteers’ help in forming self help groups (SHG) in these villages and also help the villagers in Bamboo
trading.

Target area is approximately 50 km from Sambalpur. This place has no basic facilities. No electricity. They have some govt schools, which are far away from the villages, and it seems that they are mostly closed because there are no teachers to run these schools.

Self Help Groups (SHG)
-Must have a bank account
-8-25 people (women) in a group
Mrs Mahanti gave then Rs.500 and asked them to return in 6 months at 9% interest once it was returned she increased it to 1000
- They do various kinds of activities depending on the availability of resources in that area for example can do goat rearing, bamboo trading...

Mrs. Mahanti believes that nothing should be free. A part of money should (lets say 20%) come from the people so that they feel the responsibility to take care of it.

Questions:
About bamboo plantation and re-growth
-issues about planting bamboo- survives drought, grows in one year- eco balance and ideas that can be borrowed from Timbuktu.

From Asha-Detroit she is seeking funding for the education component of her project in target area

The total budget is about $9000 but we can do it in parts. The main thing that is required is 2 rooms in each of the 4 villages she is targeting. That cost about $5000. One she has this set-up then the schools require the rest of the money for maintenance. So once we help her in getting the rooms ready the maintenance cost is not that
much. She also wants to bring medical facilities once this building is there.

Goal:
Basic Education

Present condition:
- A centrally located school that is 4km away from these villages
-3 villages ~ 200 people 1 village ~ 600 people

Questions:
1. How many children attend schools now
2. Proximity od any school to each village
3. How to convince parents to send kidds to school
4. What kind of work do these child laborers do?
5. Who will be the teachers:
- Most educated people from the same area who are interested in teaching
6. Get BISWA profile in electronic form
7. Any hospitals nearby- one in sambalpur-separate project.

We should have a discussion next week about this project and give a decision. Everything about this project seems positive.

Usually we do site visits to the projects we review but since Mrs. Mahanti will be a Asha star for this project, the site visit requirement is waived.

Being an Asha star will be responsible to for her team that will support her in her work apart from the help that we give her.

Assignment of Co-ordinators:
Orissa project: Annamalai Veerappan (Sai will mediate to start with)

Purna pragna: Shubh Mangal will take over responsibities from Ganesh who will be contact for purnaprgna in India.

WAH publicity:
-Shubh to contact old school association for publicity
-TIE(The Indus Enterpreneurs)- Possibility of setting up a WAH fundraising drive on 12th sep meeting. Anupam to follow-up
-MAPI-Priyanka Shanbagh
- Reminder to Mumtaz Haq

Support A Child:SAC:
-Seattle has 3 projects that we can work on for now before we start our own SAC with purnapragna.
-Shubh responsible for contactind donors and finding their interest.
- Shubh will send the textual information about the projects to the donors and find their interest

Responsiblities of the SAC coordinator:
1) Get profiles of kids from the Project contact:
(Vidyanand will give me a spread sheet and template for profile sheet (that tells you what information about the child are needed)

2) Do not have to give all personal information about the kid to the donor. The SAC coordinator can decide where to draw line(like information about parents and things like that)

3) While sending profiles to the donors, its enough if we give textual information about the child (no need for picture of the kid)

4) DO NOT PUT THE PICTURE AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE KID ON WEBSITE.
Just can say child1, child2...

5) The chapter should mediate between the Child (project) and the donor.

6) Lot of work interms of keeping track of checks given by donor, child supported and things like that for the person handling the SAC.

7)If a donor doesn’t make the regular payments, then can follow the 3 step rules. Mail him, call him the finally send him a mail saying that we are looking for some one else to support the child but in future they can still help in donating money for other kids.

8) It will be better that the SAC coordinator gets a copy of the communication between the kid and the donor just to know that they are in touch.

9) Incase the donor is not able to fulfill the commitment for the kid, the money goes from Chapter general funds.

Mr. Rangaswamy Elango's talk here in Detroit:
Suggestion for Venues: Troy Community center. Mad to find out from RIM people.