VOICE
July 14th, 2002
VOICE is another established project. We would like to do online discussions. However, we need to
send the check to VOICE
through Mugdha.
So, we had a short discussion on this project. We had picked some of the
components of VOICE to fund about 6 months back. They have classes running in railway stations in and around Andheri and Borivli in Bombay.
They're having accommodation
problems and
are looking for property in Virar, Mumbai. The property will cost them Rs. 17 lakhs. Components are as follows. Srajan
is one component. Balsabha
is another
component that helps the kids express themselves and discuss issues like child labour. Budget is
Rs. 30,000.00 for 2
years. The third
component was educational camps for the
children. They visited northern Indian cities. Rs. 1.4
lakhs for this component.
Total funding is Rs. 2 lakhs / $ 5196.00 for 1 years. This is about $100 per child per year. This is on
the higher side compared
to other projects
(Avg $30 per child per year). Mugdha will be visiting the project during her Mumbai trip. Ranjeet Ranade who visited the project has
his reports online.
Questions should be emailed to Mugdha.
Melli:
Q1 Question reg.
self-sustenance arose because they are almost completely Asha funded and Asha cannot fund
them forever. How well
are their businesses
doing? Diyas, greeting cards, screen printing?
Nil:
Q2 One gripe about
VOICE is that they tend to spend a lot of money on their children.
Mugdha: One reason is that they have to find property near the railway stns since the kids come from
there.
Alka:
Q3 They should try and
find some community resources that will save money.
Ranjini:
Q4 Receipts and
financial statements should be got from them when Mugdha goes over.
Vote on second installment: 10 for, 1 against, 3 abstain.
Second installment check ($2600) will be sent from Asha-wide.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Voice
Sept. 26, 2001
Munira Khalil
Munira breifly described her site visit to Voice in Mumbai. Many Asha
chapters have been involved with Voice and are all happy with the
work being
done. Victor and Rajashree
who run Voice are being held in high regard by
Asha. Voice even got WAH
funding for year 2000. Asha Boston had
sent $2300
to Voice and there was some confusion as to whether we received
any receipts
for that. Voice had sent a
report detailing their expenses for this $2300.
We had promised them $3600 and so we owe them another $1300. Melli felt and
others agreed that this should just be included in our next
funding for
Voice. All agreed that
Voice was definitely qualified for funding but there
was some doubt on how much should Asha Boston fund since their
requirements
were quite big.
Munira went through the different projects that Voice is planning
to
implement and the outlay for each one them. A vote was held on how much
Asha Boston is willing to fund Voice this year. 1 vote for $5000 as the
upper limit, 7 for $5000, 1 for $10000 and 2 for $3500. A ranking for the
individual proposals were also made and the following were the
points
allocted
Srajan - 6
Bal Sabha - 5
Educational Camps - 7
Sur Aur Sarang - 3
Swadhar - 4
AAA (formal) - 1
After this it was decide Asha Boston would fund Srajan, Bal Sabha
and
Educational Camps which together come to $5196. Munira promised to post the
details of these 3 proposals on strategy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOICE: Munira (June 18th, 2000 WAH project discussion)
In the Akshar Ank Anubhav project of VOICE, it says that the
children go
to NFE centers after which they join municipal schools. Do these
children
drop out after joining these schools after going through thte NFE
centers?
The total amount requested by VOICE was $8726. Melli felt that
this was
small enough an amount for individual chapters to fund and
probably
doesn't have to be funded by WAH money. Ananth also felt the same
way.
Anu,Munira and Ranjith felt that VOICE was a very good project and
even
if it could be funded by other chapters, even if the amount
requested can
be broken down into smaller amounts for individual projects, it
was not
reason enough to not conside rit for WAH funding. They may not
have
requested for a large enough amount, but the plan would be to scale
it up
with time...People were curious to know if there were any set
guidelines
as to what kind (scaleable projects,large scale projects aiming at
structural change) of projects will be funded by WAH. AS of now,
there are
no specific guidelines for What should be a WAH project. Any
deserving
project if voted upon by volunteers as a whole will be funded by
WAH.
Srinidhi suggested that maybe we could go according to
"type" of project -
say a couple of tribal projects, couple of "slum"
projects etc...
While people were agreeable to that too, it was finally decided
that
volunteers (ASHA-Boston) will individually vote in strategy
mailing list
after the WAH project discussions and rank the projects.