Asha General Meeting (Aug 27, 2006) minutes:

Attendees: Himanshu, Tina, Mugdha, Gaurav, Shweta, Alka, Amit, Melli,
Aravind, Pradeep

1.Gandhi Day of Service: Every year, Asha folks volunteer their time at a
local school to mark Gandhi Day of service. Alka will co-ordinate it this
year at Greenhouse school, salem(Action item). The proposed date is sep30
(Alka, Melli, Tina have confirmed and Mugdha, Himanshu, Pradeep are tentative
to attend this year). Others could get back to Alka, if interested.

2. Right To Education(RTE) campaign: Alka and Melli gave an overview on the
RTE bill and the campaign . The primary motive of this campaign is to get a
RTE bill defining the fundamental Right to Education for all children to be
tabled in the Indian parliament. This bill might help improve the education
system in India for everybody - especially the infrastructure. Asha is
currently spearheading a Right to Education
(http://www.ashanet.org/campaigns/rte/) campaign. As part of the chapter's
support to Asha's campaign, we brainstormed what we could do and came up
with the following in no particular order (a) All East coast chapters could
meet in NY/DC to protest (b) Publicize through media articles (c) sign online
petition (d) publicise at events (e) Add link to chapter's website, marathon
website and publicise on our mailing lists (f) Tina - to co-ordinate with
groups in Boston and have a conference with them (Action item)

3. Since there were some new volunteers, they were given an overview of
various aspects of Asha. The topics that were covered: (a)Asha:
history,what/how it works for, structure(Pradeep) (b)projects, type of
projects, how we select them, funding, et al(Melli) (c)WAH (Mugdha)
(d)marathon program(Tina)

4. Events: There was a brief discussion on possible events for this
year. Detailed coverage will be in the future meetings

Thanks,
Pradeep
Asha MIT/Boston
http://www.ashanet.org/mit