Background

What you can do

FAQ

Project partners

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Asha Seattle

Introduction

Asha-Seattle is a chapter of Asha for Education, a non-profit voluntary organization dedicated to socio-economic change in India mainly using the medium of education. Our goal is to also address general development and human issues such as women's issues, health-care and related issues, over and above our charter of furthering children’s education. Asha was started in 1991 in Berkeley. The Seattle chapter was formed in December 1994 by a diverse group of students and professionals from the Seattle area. Asha is a secular organization and has no religious or political affiliation. The aim of the group is to mobilize the local population to collectively support and provide assistance in different forms to groups working at the grass roots in India.

Asha's mission

1. To provide education to underprivileged children in India.
2. To encourage the formation of various local groups across the world to reach out to larger sections of the population.
3. To support and cooperate with persons and groups already engaged in similar activities.
4. To raise the required human and other resources to achieve the group objectives.
5. To provide opportunities to individuals living outside India who wish to participate in Asha activities in India.
6. To address, whenever possible, other issues affecting human life such as health care, environment, socio-economic aspects and women's issues.

Asha's achievements

Asha's focus on grassroots development has galvanized a number of volunteers across the globe. Today, there are over 66 Asha chapters worldwide: 45 in the US, 14 in India and 7 in Europe, Singapore and Australia. Till date, Asha has supported more than 385 different projects spanning 24 states in India. In terms of project funding, almost $4 Million has been disbursed to these projects since Asha's inception. In 2002 alone, Asha chapters raised and disbursed more than $1 Million to over 200 projects. Ours is a zero overhead organization which means that 100% of all donations are channeled to our project partners.

Holistic View of Education

"By education I mean the all round drawing out of body, mind and spirit",-MK Gandhi

Education to us does not stand for "schooling" or "literacy" but for an idea that helps us in improving awareness of the society as a whole. Health or the vocational and social needs of children or building alternative infrastructure and/or educational models or shaping legislation or community-based intervention programs, education should encompass these issues and much more. Education is more like looking around us and remolding the society on the basis of our constant learning experiences. Education becomes less meaningful when seen in isolation. There is a logical progression in the development trajectory of any community - Nutrition, Shelter, Healthcare, Education, and Income generation, Public policy, Governance.

Asha for All

As part of the Asha charter, all Asha chapters have a high degree of freedom in their activities including identification, research, support and ownership of projects. The flat, non-hierarchical structure of Asha bonds all the volunteers on a common ideological platform. In spite of this flexibility at the level of the individual chapters, there is a good deal of co-operation among chapters and volunteers across chapters. This co-operation is evident in the joint ownership of projects across chapters, formation of focus groups across chapters (e.g., Asha Sanctuary, Asha Healthcare, Asha Tribal and other Yahoo! groups), cross-chapter discussions on issues of interest, worldwide events like the Asha-Wide Conference, Work-An-Hour Fundraiser, Asha Regional Conferences and the Asha India Conference.

Role of Asha Seattle

Asha Seattle, with an active volunteer base of about 30-35 (and scores of others who chip in when needed!) has been partnering closely with number of grass-root organizations in India for achieving its objectives. We do give special emphasis to projects in rural and economically underprivileged areas. Clearly, identifying, researching, owning, funding, and sustaining projects have formed the core of Asha's activities till now. Asha raises funds for its projects in a number of ways: individual donations, corporate donations, sale of merchandise (T-shirts, calendars, mugs, greeting cards, etc.), fundraising dinners, Indian classical music and dance concerts, popular music concerts and many others. However, personal leadership that the volunteers take in carrying out Asha's activities has ushered in a sense of awareness about developmental issues in India and has inspired a whole range of volunteers to get involved in other social causes. Our chapter also works towards raising awareness in appropriate forums about various issues affecting the people of India. This awareness-raising is accomplished by organizing discussion series, invited talks and focus groups.

Our emphasis is on the following:

• To form close partnerships with groups in India. We attempt to maintain regular contact and visit the groups we work with to form a stable long term relationship.
• To maximize effectiveness of our efforts we seek to support groups in rural and economically poor areas.
• To provide assistance in different ways such as financial, material and technological support to the groups in India.
• To learn about and disseminate information on different social issues faced by the affected people in India.
• To organize talks by different grass roots activists in India in the Seattle area.

Asha Seattle at a glance

Asha Seattle supports a number of projects spread over fifteen states in India. We are involved with issues as varied as formal and non-formal education to community awareness programs, community-based intervention programs, vocational training centers and working with children with special needs. You can find a comprehensive list here.

So how do we raise the money for all this? We organize various events and activities throughout the year, attend shows and festivals to publicize our activities, and invite donors to contribute to our projects.

• Work closely with project partners in India.
• Raise funds for our projects.
• Increase awareness about our activities through events and discussion groups.
• Get more people involved in our activities, including our fundraisers, bimonthly meetings and project reviews.

How Asha Seattle is organized

Asha is a volunteer driven organization and there is no paid staff. Though strictly a non-hierarchical organization, Asha Seattle does have an organizational back-up for functional necessity (doesn’t that make life simple sometimes!). Typically a chapter coordinator’s role includes the following

• Tracking intra-chapter activities at all levels (new work areas, projects, events, correspondence, any chapter related activity).
• Intra- and inter-chapter correspondence.
• Handling queries about the chapter from both donors and volunteers.
• It is important that a coordinator be accessible to all volunteers.
• Backup all tasks that slip up when volunteers get busy with other commitments.

In addition, we have project coordinators, individual project stewards and a finance team which oversees all money related issues. For a comprehensive list of contact persons, click here or check out Appendix II.