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Meeting minutes of Jan 09, 2003
Attendees: Amalan, Swati,
Arindam, Bash, Joyita, Laxmi, Preeti, Raj, Srinivas, Sunil and two new members
Anupa and Savita.
Items discussed:
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Newsletters are ready. They will be printed by
Saturday and the team will meet at Bash’s place on Sunday to prepare them
for mailing.
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UMBVS: Raj presented the UMBVS budget and the
following items on the budget required clarification:
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What are Inspection costs?
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What does “contingency” include?
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What is the Audit fee?
Raj will get the answers to these questions and
post them on Asha-Seattle mailing list. The members present were of the
opinion that funding should be provided for running of school and not for
expenses related to training. This amounts to about 5K in total. A vote on
how much Asha-Seattle will contribute will take place in the next meeting or
online.
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Digantar: Amalan and Laxmi talked about the
latest news from Digantar. Anita made a site visit earlier this year and
reported that the funds that the government was supposed to provide had
come through albeit late. Right now, the funding situation at Digantar
seems to be under control. The allocated (but not yet disbursed) funds of
about 25K were now available to the chapter. It was decided to wait for
about a month and see if any requests for funds came from Digantar. In
case that did not happen the 25K would be available for other projects.
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Bash’s Site Visits: Bash gave the group an
update on the five projects he was able to visit during his recent trip to
India. He also gave the group a briefing about the recently concluded
Asha- India meeting. The projects he visited are:
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Vikaasana – near Bangalore
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Sumavanam – near Madanapalli
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Anugruha – in Tamil Nadu
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Auroville – near Pondicherry
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Prasanna Jyoti – in Bangalore
We were able to get into the details only on
Anugruha –
A couple moved from Bombay and started this
school in the early 90s. The school has 104 kids, 10-12 teachers (1500 –
2000 Rs. salary) and offers very high quality alternative education. The
children are very confident and have even raised money for their school
through a performance in Bombay. Each child gets 1hr/day on the computer.
The school uses alternate methods of education (Glenn Doman) and has a lot
of informational videos that the children can make use of. One of the issues
that come forth is the deep-rooted caste problem in the community. Bash also
mentioned that the couple running the school has not made an effort to
integrate as well with the community. The older children take care of the
younger ones and all children take field trips. Separately, they are
waiting for FCRA clearance.
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