Minutes of the Asha-Princeton Projects Focus Group
meeting held on Saturday, March 1, 2003 - by Sridhar
Attendees: Hansa, Amit, Manoj, Vinay, Sumathi, Izhak,
Amrish, Uday, Kumar, Sridhar.
Agenda:
· Nalamdana project review and discussion
· PROBE questionnaire (deferred)
· Asha India projects
Minutes taken by Sridhar
A. Nalamdana:
Nalamdana is one of the ongoing Asha Princeton
projects. Asha Princeton has supported the Leadership
development project by Nalamdana from 1999.
Specifically, Asha Princeton supports the scholarships
for eight children and the expenses for conducting
summer workshops in English and leadership development
for 35 children. This project is currently supported
by two other Asha chapters (Asha DC and Asha
Stanford). For more discussion on the project and
slides presented by Hansa for the project review,
please visit http://www.ashanet.org/princeton/projects/nalamdana.html
Hansa presented the ongoing scholarships/ leadership
training program. Some of the discussion was centered
around the cost structure of support for various Asha
chapters. It was agreed that a uniform structure of
$150/ student would be acceptable to Asha Princeton
volunteers. Some issues regarding the apparent lack
of transparency on Nalamdana?s part was discussed.
Asha Princeton encourages our project partners to be
transparent with their activities and accounts. To
this extent it is our current policy to request for
audited account statements from all our project
partners in India (for the entire organization).
Action Items:
i.Hansa to obtain annual report/ account statements
from Nalamdana (through Giri) and make them available
to Asha Princeton projects group.
ii. Check with Nalamdana on whether they would be
amenable for making these public through Nalamdana/
Asha website.
Discussions on the long-term goals and
self-sufficiency resulted in a conclusion that the
project can become self-sustaining only if Nalamdana
has income generating programs to support it. Other
concepts such as instituting the scholarships as soft
loans to students and/ or having a corpus fund for
supporting the program were brought up.
Projects group felt that as one of the project metrics
we should review what some of the alumni of the
Nalamdana leadership program are doing now. A
tracking mechanism for monitoring the current
activities of the alumni would help us guage the
success of the program. Asha Princeton would also
like to follow the progress of all the students (not
just those students we are supporting).
iii. Action Item: Hansa to follow up with Nalamdana
to obtain the relevant information.
Since the program is related to leadership
development, some of the volunteers felt that the
students should be encouraged to conduct group
activities in local communities to educate younger
children about social responsibilities etc. (For
example, having a tree-planting as a community
awareness activity). Students should be encouraged to
give back to the community (sweat equity concept).
Finally, we agreed that Nalamdana is a unique Asha
project that aims at developing leaders of tomorrow.
Our hope is that some of the alumni would actively
participate in the development of their local
communities. Asha Princeton would support funds for
eight students ($1200) and for workshops ($1800) and
the coordinator salary ($200).
Action Items:
iv. Hansa/ Uday to work with Asha Treasurer to issue
a check for $3200 and send to the project.
v.Hansa/ Giri to look actively for identifying Asha
stars for the project.
B. Asha India projects
Asha Ashram in Lalpur needs a host chapter in the US
to help them on a regular basis (for administrative
and monitoring purposes). This project works with 20
families in Lalpur towards the idea of making them
self-sufficient. Some of the activities include
apiary (beekeeping), Chayavanprash making, card
printing etc. This project is deemed to be
self-sufficient and would not need fundraising effort
from Asha Princeton. Asha-MIT has agreed to take up
the responsibility in conjunction with another
chapter. If any of you are interested in taking up
the responsibility of being a steward for this
project, please let us know.
Asha General Funds group has agreed to support two
Fellows. The fellowship nomination/ review process is
currently in progress. The current proposal is to
associate each fellow to a chapter for making chapters
take ownership of the fellowship program and to be in
regular contact with the fellows and learn from their
experiences in India. If you are interested in being
the contact person for this, please let us know.