Meeting minutes of Sept 25, 2002

Attendees: Sanjay, Anju, Pradeep, Anita, Amlan, Madhavan, Jayant,
Jayashree, Bash

Calendar pledge drive: Anita gave an update on Tulika, an organization
in Chennai that promotes peace and harmony through books and other
material.  They helped design the Asha 2003 calendar.  This year the
calendar was printed in India and even with shipping costs, this has
worked out to be more economical than previous years.  We need a
coordinator for the calendar pledge drive for 2003.

Detroit chapter update: Madhavan of the Detroit chapter gave an update
on the activities and projects of the Detroit chapter.  They are
currently supporting 3 projects and he gave details on all three.

Rajeevji's concert: Amlan talked about this.  Rajeevji is a professor
from the Los Angeles area who plays the sarod.  He was interested in a
fund raiser for Asha here in Seattle either on 26,27,28 of Oct or in
Nov.  We voted on this and decided that the cost/benefit was not
worthwhile for us.  There are also many other classical concerts in
the fall in Seattle by Ragamala and Rasika.  Amlan will write back to
say that we won't be able to hold this event.  We had a general
discussion on events following this.  Jayashree brought up the
possibility of a dance concert by Meera Krishna and Joyce Paul, two
local artistes. There was interest in pursuing this for next spring. 
Also it was suggested that Archana Soy should coordinate with Rajesh
Munshi of CRY to make sure that our events don't collide in the
future (to avoid what happened with Slaves and Dandia).

Bottled water and drinks at Asha events: Amlan started a discussion
about not selling bottled water and drinks at Asha events (other than
tea) since there are many issues associated with companies that bottle
water or deal with aluminium products.  We are going to look into
implementing this in the future.

American Indian Foundation: This is a high profile organization that
Jayashree has been in touch with.  They have a big budget of $8-$10M
per year.  They want to work with Asha, but one caveat is that all
Asha events/fundraisers in the future would become joint Asha-AIF
events.  It is early to tell whether we want to pursue this further,
but there is interest in keeping our options open.

Asha Info-night: Sanjay and Anju are coordinating this and it will be
on the 30th.  15 people have RSVP'd so far and we need at least 30 to
attend.