Attendees: Chandru, Kamal, Neeraj, Param, Venki Iyengar, Vidhi, Vineeta, Vinod Minutes: 3 projects for WAH 99 were reviewed. These were: Bhoomi Heen Seva Samithi, Vivekanda Education Society for Children(VESC), Jyothi Nilayam (JN). For more details about WAH 99 and projects, please follow links from the website www.ashanet.org/Infoshare. Vineeta gave a brief summary of the Bhoomiheen Seva Samithi project. The project aims to provide basic education and skills to children of landless in Banda, U.P. Funds requested: $6200 (recurring cost) and $13000 (fixed cost), per annum. WAH99 funds are being requested for the non-recurring part only. (Please follow above link for detailed project proposal). The following were the questions raised about the project: 1) Why are the budgets from the Samithi proposal and Mahesh's site visit report inconsistent ? 2) Given that the project has been running since a while, how successful have the skill development activities been in making the students independent ? Vineeta has volunteered to get answers to these from the project contact and present them at a later meeting. Venki presented on the Vivekanada Education Society for Children project. This is a project based in semi-rural West Bengal. They are presently running two schools at temporary locations. WAH funds were requested for covering non-recurring expeses (approx. $8500) which can be used to build a permanent school. Questions raised: 1) Part of recurring expenses has been earmarked for Self Help Groups. How are these funds utilised ? 2) Since the school caters primarily to child laborers, will the students continue to work while attending school ? 3) Since the schools are only uptp Grade V, are there any middle schools nearby where students can continue education ? 4) Money sent two years back by ASHA AZ, Berkeley, Colorado has not yet reached VESC as they did not have FCRA clearance. Are they exploring options to get the funds through ? Can we use some other channels of sending money like ASHA-India to reduce this beaureaucratic delay ? Venki has volunteered to get clarifications from the contact persons. Kamal summarised the Jyoti Nilayam project. JN runs a temporary kindergarten in rural AP for 16 less privileged children. Funds are requested for starting a primary and secondary school with 16-24 students in each grade. Budget: $39000, $26000, $32000 for 3 successive years. It was felt that the project had too high funding requirements and catered to a rather small number of children (16 per class). Also the WAH funds would be unable to meet the complete funding requirements. JN did not have any alternate plans in case they did not manage to get the requisite funds. There was not much support for this project to be funded in its present form. There was a discussion about whether it would be appropriate to use funds for infrastructure typically non-recurring expenses like buildings and if such funds were committed, should the organization running the project have ownership of the property. In such cases the organization must have established some credibility. This could make it difficult for new projects to procure funds for infrastructure. There was an argument over whether the ultimate goal of funding projects was to make them self sustaining i.e. they could be run on funds solely from the Govt and NGO's or whether they needed continued support from chapters in the US or if they were to be self sufficient by generating revenue within the community through the skills imparted by the school. It was decided to defer this discussuion to a later meeting. This would help in framing our chapter guidlines as far as selection of projects to be funded goes. We would be meeting again next week wherein the remaining 3 projects for WAH 99 would be critically reviewed after which the voting process can be started. Please note that for the rest of the summer we'll meet in Memorial Union/Union Terrace and not in Union South on account of summer camp.