Minutes of conference call with NIAS personnel on Jan 19, 2006. Attendees: Melli, Srinivasan (Asha), Padma, Prakash and Rahul (NIAS) Here is a quick summary of our discussion: 1) They have bought TLM (Teaching and Learning Material) and infrastructure items for 2 BRCs (Block Resource Centres) in Kollegal and Gundlupet, and 1 CRC (Cluster Resource Centre) in Chamarajnagar taluka. It has cost them Rs 70816 approx = $1540 for this purpose. I'll upload the cost breakdown that they sent us on the webpage over the weekend. 2) They have conducted a workshop to explain the use of the resource centres (attended by teachers and head masters). They have appointed a Resource Centre Incharge (RIC) for each of these centres (not paid for by us) and have had a formal launch of these centres. 3) Current challenges include being able to track loaned items (since identification of borrowers is not formal), and having the importance of these centres seep into teachers of individual schools. There is no point if teachers don't borrow the resources made available to them and use them in their classroom. 4) One thing that I liked about this project is that they are awaiting usage statistics of individual items (e.g. books, TLMs etc.) before they purchase additional copies. E.g., having just one copy of a particular book won't suffice since teachers from multiple schools might want to use it at the same time. NIAS is waiting to get data on the demand for that book before they decide on how many copies to buy. They have also sent a catalogue of the items they have. I'll upload that on the webpage too. 5) The next step would be (after seeing how these centres work) to replicate this in the three remaining blocks of Chamarajnagar district. We are working with NIAS on money requirements for this. The estimate as of now is about Rs 35,000 per centre. So we should be fairly comfortable supporting them with the WAH money that we already have. We can discuss this in more detail in a meeting about 3-4 months from now.