Asha-Madison Projects Group Meeting Minutes
 
 Date: April 27, 2000
 Time: 6.00 p.m.-7.00 p.m.
 Venue: 240B Union South
 
 Attendees: Anita, Harit, Kamal, Mrs. & Mr. Ravi K., Subbu, Venki, Venky
 
 -> First-time attendees Mrs. & Mr. Ravi were introduced to the group. Ravi
 mentioned that he discovered our group through a search on voluntary
 organizations on the Internet. 
 
 -> Venki Iyengar informed the group that a letter of intent for supporting
 GIRD project in Manipur had been sent to B.C.Sharma, the project contact
 for GIRD and to the Ministry of Home Affairs, India so that GIRD could
 obtain FCRA clearance. 
 
 -> Anita and Venki Iyengar stressed the need for a more efficient project 
 screening process to avoid wastage of valuable time in project meetings 
 where very few projects were being discussed and after very long periods 
 of time. 
 
 -> Kamal read out project guidelines followed by Seattle and MIT chapters. 
 It was felt that the Madison chapter should set up similar such procedures 
 and guidelines. Venki and Anita volunteered to read up some more such 
 documents posted in the past and come up with a comprehensive project 
 summary template before the next meeting. The template would consist of
 project name, location, profile, objectives, budget, good points, concerns
 among other things. This template, once ready, would be sent to everyone
 in the project group for comments. 
 
 -> Subbu commented that while making project guidelines we should keep in
 mind geographic asymmetries of Asha projects. States like Tamil Nadu, 
 Maharashtra, West Bengal seem to have many more projects than other states 
 like North-Eastern states for example. 
 
 -> People suggested having a definite meeting time for meetings in the
 future. It was decided by voting that project meetings would be held every
 first and third Saturday's of the month from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The
 first such meeting would be on May 6 (Sat.), 2000. Kamal would take care 
 of reserving the room in Union South. 
 
 -> For faster reviewing of projects, a 2 stage process was suggested by
 Anita. The first stage will consist of a quick initial review of 3-4
 projects in one meeting. Before this meeting, project reviwers will send
 out a one page project summary on the lines of the template made by Venki
 and Anita, atleast one day prior to the meeting. Also Lata Iyer would be 
 contacted to confirm if the project has not already been funded. Answers
 to questions raised during the initial review should obtained by the 
 reviewers (steward) from the project contact by email, phone snail mail, 
 as early as possisble. Once all the information on a project is obtained,
 detailed discussion on it will be done at an exclusive meeting. Lata Iyer
 should be informed that our chapter is reviewing that particular project.
 This review process would continue until a decision to fund/not fund the
 project is taken. 
 
 -> Kamal briefed the group about two new projects K-8 and Banda. K-8
 project was without a proposal. Banda would be discussed at the next
 meeting. A summary would be posted to the group before that meeting. Also
 Harit and Venki will be sending out summaries of Shiksha Niketan and MPS
 respectively.