June 1999 

Date:  June 16, 1999.

Attendees: Arvind, Bash, Chandra, Gagan, Jayashree, Maya, Neelesh, Rachana, Raja, Ramesh, Sachin

Annual Picnic July 17th: Maya gave an update on the plans for the annual Asha picnic. Picnic flyers were distributed and will be put up at various places in the UW, Microsoft etc.
We discussed the feed back from previous picnics and decided to include more activities this time including a lot of games, anthakshari etc. Sachin and party from the UW will be incharge of this.

We need volunteers for the following:

• Cooking (Asha will reimburse all the cooking expenses)
• Reserving the park area on the day of the picnic
• To make and put signs leading to the Picnic spot from the park entrance on the day of the picnic
• To sell Asha T-Shirts and mugs.
• Ride for UW students

Neelesh talked about the All chapter Asha conference.
The key points discussed were:

• What should Asha do? (Volunteering, primary education, Democracy for India.)
• Impact of Projects.
• Asha 2000, Asha Fellows.

Asha 2000: Shanmuga from Princeton will be spending a year in India starting early 2000. He will visit as many projects as possible and spend a lot of time on each project. The aim is to stay longer at each project and get a more comprehensive understanding of the working of the project and its effects.

To undertake this mission, he has estimated that it would cost an average $80 per project. Apart from this he will also need to buy equipment like a Laptop, video camera etc, which is estimated to cost about $4000 which will be shared by all Asha chapters.
Shanmuga has requested each chapter to come up with projects that they would want him to visit.

We came up with the following criterion to decide on the projects we would want him to visit:

1. Project should be atleast 3 years old for any effect to be visible.
2. A project that is very unique about which we would like more information, Projects in remote areas where organizing a site visit would be very difficult.
3. Only recurring projects.

Based on this criterion we chose the following projects:

1. CMS   (Bengal)
2. RHEDT (Tamil nadu)
3. Padsare (Maharashtra)
4. Sakharshala (Maharashtra)
5. Anugriha (Tamil Nadu)
6. Rashtra Nirman (Bihar)
7. Chetana (Haryana)

We will need to target an amount of around $1200 to cover the expenses for the projects and the equipment cost. There was a debate as to whether the money should come from the project account or the Org acount. It was decided that the money should come from the org account. In this way 100% of all donor money will go to the projects.

We will need to collect the money in the next three months. Chandra is incharge of collecting the money for Asha 2000

Neelesh also talked about the Asha fellows program which will support volunteers in India who will work full time on various projects.

We also discussed the need for an Update on the projects by the project coordinators. There will be one project update at each of the future meetings lasting about 10 minutes. This will help all volunteers to keep up to date on every Asha project.

Sachin will make a web form for feed back on the projects.
Rachna talked about the Work An Hour  to