Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM)

October 28^th, 2001 Meeting

Melliyal Annamalai

Melli gave a overview of Dr. Balu’s work as part of the Vivekananda Youth Movement in the Mysore area.

Dr.Balu’s organization: Group of doctors from Mysore who started this organization.

Dist collector saw that they had been doing really good work. He encouraged them to start something in the tribal areas, gave them land. Has tribals and non-tribals. They were displaced twice. Kabini reservoir sends water there. Started with the health prog. Need more all round community development. He also started off with standard govt school system idea. There are five tribal schools in the area. A third grade kid came and pointed to a picture of jainukurbas sittingon elephants and said - we don’t look like that. So at that point he realized that the govt text books don’t depict them as they are, as their culture is.

21% passed in first year. Second time everybody passed. Class 1 – 10, tribal culture accommodated.. like holidays on tribal festivals not just the regular ones.

Middle school in between. High school in regular structure. Integrate tribals with mainstream and at the same time retain some of the tribal cultural aspects. Visit was impressive, kids were really bold and confident, excellent library including English tell me why books. Kids were quite conversant with English. Very impressive. Mother tongue is not kannada, medium of instruction is Kannada and by the time they are in 5^th std they know enough English. Teachers are recruited in the community itself. One the teachers got a national youth award. They themselves modified lot of learning techniques to suit the tribal background.

SVYM has been funded for 7-8 years by Asha SV, the school is not govt aided but gets some govt. funds.

They are now building a huge hospital with outlay of 600,000 $ in sargur. Dr. Balu raised in 400,000 $ locally. Dr. Balu made a visit to the US to raise additional 100,000 $. It has not been very successful. He was able to raised $25k. Trying to involve Asha more in the school so that funds can be diverted to the hospital.

Why should we fund such huge, established org. Should we split the funding for big, medium and small (new and more risk) ?

Hospital has a sustainability plan, would be sustainable in three years.

We can fund 20 children ($2K). 444 is the max capacity. If Asha does not fund it is not that the school will be stopped. He has to look elsewhere for the hospital. They are adopting 40 govt school, using the experience of running the tribal schools. Basically training the govt school teachers.

When we Melli visited they never requested funds. They were getting funds from the govt. through DPEP etc.

It might be worth funding as it is very well run and the children really benefit a lot in the schools. It would be very valuable to have a person like this relationship

Should we consider for more than 20 kids. Melli cannot look at this in isolation. We have $250 K sitting at the central bank (aside).

Ranjini’s friend (Mridula Swami) is planning to run a fund raiser for Asha. She wants a showcase project. Q: When is she planning to do this ? A: Next semester. If we atleast fund 20 kids now we can probably add on more. She plans to raise around $3K

Dr. Balu’s wants to know our decision before Nov 4^th.

Two votes. One for whether to fund at all and two for funds. Can we just fund 20 now and more later if we have more.

30 - 5

25 – 3

40 –1

50 - 2

Abstain - 3

Did Dr. Balu mention any expectation. He just said any amount would do ? 20 was great.

We send them $1500 in Sept 2000 for the other project.

So, we have decided to fund 30 students and that would mean ($3K).