Asha-Detroit Meeting Minutes - December 4, 2005

Attendees: Sai, Deepak, Lavanya, Shankar, Priya, Kumuda, Ajith, Jui Chakravarthy (new vol), Latha, Hitesh,
Shreekanth, Venkatesh, Indira

Intros:
Jui: Volunteer from NYC/NJ chapter. Started the annual 5K in New York. Of the opinion that there's a lot of potential for such an event in Detroit. Likes to pursue that here.

Project updates:

Kuvempu: Austin chapter is interested in initiating a Support a Teacher project with Kuvempu. More details will be shared as information is available.

BISWA: For individuals interested in supporting the Microfinance Bank of BISWA, please contact Sai: gopisety (at) alumni (dot) princeton.edu (586-362-8205) or Mrs. Mahanti at  ranumahanti (at) yahoo.com (517-337-9570). To recap, the money will be used as a loan to start the bank and will be returned to the lender along with a 5% interest.

Purnapragna: With a change of MUDA commissioner again, the ring road project looks to be headed in a worse-case situation for the school. Current plan is to rebuild Mrs. Tara's residence cum school on the same side of the ring road as that of the rest of the school buildings. A fence will be built between the school and the road. Event though this will lead to a severe shortage of play/activity area in the school premises, this will allow Mrs. Tara to have live near the school.

SSA: Information about attendance, teacher-student ratio, and teacher training posted on asha-detroit-general.

-- Attendance: Moderate improvement. We need to find reasons for 60% attendance in some schools and how we can increase it.
-- Two libraries were setup in Robigaon and Shantivan with the help of AIRTEL
-- Teacher training: teachers with no prior training were identified. Budget needs to be finalized.
-- A workshop on teaching/learning material was conducted in October

Asha Detroit 2006 Goals:

Events to be dropped:
Art Fair

Definite Events: Tarangini, Volleyball, Marathon, WAH, Walk

Events retained with changes/conditions:

1. Table Tennis (possibility for selling food, increase in registration fee, change format)
2. Basketball (increase attendance from Schools, perhaps, greater publicity; prize money) Put on observation on 2006. Potentially
drop if we are not raising much money.
3. Heritage India (do this if we get free booths). Reduce the number of events/effort
4. Garba (team up with ISA at a UofM Dearborn, sell food)`

Non-event:
India Day (only as publicity booth). To be evaluated closer to the event.

Discussion to be continued on specific events and tentative dates at next meeting.

Asha Tutoring Proposal:

Plan is to float resumes in Troy, West Bloomfield, Novi, Farmingtion, Canton, Southfield
For people who never taught in the US, Venkatesh can prep.
Suggestion: Set up an information session day. (Will be in mid Jan)
    -- Break it down into subject areas (algebra II, Calculus A/B, geometry, pre-calculus, two topics in physics)

High schoolers and community colleges have the target audience.
Sample books will be passed on to Kumuda/Sai.
Start a yahoogroup

Publicity email should contain
    List of books and where they are available
    Financial metric/motivation
    Books can potentially be sponsored
    Sample Resume
    List of high schools and community colleges
    Tentative date
    RSVP date Jan 10th

By next meeting collect a tentative list of tutors

Next meeting date: Dec 18th.