Asha Deepa School for the Blind Update - by Arvind Rao Project Overview - 30 active children, 10 "intermittent", 12 teachers/staff - School supported by Asha B'lore and been supported by Austin since 2007 - 2009 - moved to a larger home to accomodate larger student strength - Through global giving, Sanju Kumar raised $1500 which he used for a "goat purchase" scheme to generate future savings for the children enlisting the support of their families to run the program. However, money was used for asha deepa expenses due to shortage. 2011 School Year Updates - 4 new children ~ school usually takes effort to find children, but they are not super active with this due to current financial limitations - Selected by CII (Configuration of Indian Industries) at the CSO-CSR bridge event 2011. CII setup this program to encourage corporations to look into making social change for the underpriveleged. - Eye restoration for 2 partially blind kids (Sony and Parvathi) by an independent donor in progress - Chelvi Tyagi from UK has taken up the responsibility to restore the children's eyesight. Qn: What happens to students whose eyes get restored? Do they still remain in the school? Vision for the school by 2015 - Rehabilitate 100 children - Self-sustain through dairy-farm, government funding initiatives - Construction of school campus for the children - Support parents/children financially Fundamental Issue with child blindness - Poor nutrition for pregnant woman - Might need more awareness initiatives Activities for sustenance - Govt actually has money set aside for helping schools with underpriveleged needs... but is a very slow process. - SAC legwork in progress - looking for ways to do recurring donations - Dairy Farm project --> Need 5 lakh initial grant --> 25 lakh loan from bank --> Planning to use ARC "special projects" provision for getting 5 lakhs Action Items: - ARC Presentation due by end of the year. - Talk to Chelvi Tyagi about eye restoration - Get SAC started for kids for 30 kids - School is aware that Asha Austin is under a financial crunch as well and SanjU KUMAR has been actively looking for alternative options ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Answers to questions answered in the next week: Following were the questions asked in last week's meeting regarding asha deepa: a) what kind of medical checkups happens for the kids every year Bidar has two doctors, Dr. Sibil and Dr. Mayur. They come to visit the kids every few months (between 4 to 6 months) to check the eyesight of kids. Any partially blind kids are identified. This is the checkup that is done. b) what happens after they are rehab, do they go to school Yes. For example, Premsingh whose eye was restored now goes to school in chincoli about 60 km away from Bidar, the last time they contacted. c) Any partially blind kids in the school? two kids who are going to be operated. d) What is the ratio of partially blind kids/completely blind in the school? Outside of the two kids at school, rest are 100% blind (except those three who are undergoing operation-one already operated and the other two are getting operated) e) Also, there are organizations across India which provide free operations to kids. Can we find out about them and set up a channel so that any newly identified kid gets their eye restored. Mrs. Chelvi from USA has connected us to Sanakara Eye Hospital in Hyderabad. We will work with this hospital from now onwards. However, they are bit slow. They haven't responded to our query in the last 10 days. Once the channel gets established, we should hopefully have a faster path to eye restoration. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vote taken via email: Yes: 6 (Arvind R, Savitha , Bhaskar, Arun, Charanya, Ranga) Abstain: 1 ( Mohit) No: 0