March 1st, 2002
Hi all,
UMBVS, the WAH project Srikanth has requested we submit as a
project from Boston is being discussed this weekend. With WAH projects it is the responsibility of the supporting
chapter to do a thorough review so that when the asha-wide discussion/vote
happens they can assume that details (integrity, budget details etc.) have been
taken care of and they can discuss on the more higher levels aspects of the
project. That isthe goal of the
discussion this weekend.
Under Asha-Boston --> files --> WAH projects I have
uploaded a site visit, an accounts spreadsheet, and what looks like receipts
Srikanth will upload more stuff or send us a
pointer to a website so that we can have an informed review.
(note the files are under
Asha-Boston for wider access).
Melli
Project Discussion
March 3rd, 2002
Organisation in Rajasthan that has been involved
with Lok Jumbish etc. After Pokhran, many international orgns pulled out. A
component of UMBVS was proposed for WAH 2000 and is proposed again for WAH
2002. Sandeep Pandey has visited and liked the project. There was another site
visit also.
Srikanth Voorakaranam proposed this project again
for WAH 2002 but by Asha guidelines, a chapter has to propose a project. The
idea is for Asha-Boston to propose this project. The proposal has to be
submitted to Asha-wide by March 15th, 2002.
Land was allocated to the Dalits along the Indira
Gandhi canal. Infrastructure development didn’t keep up with the population.
UMBVS wants to run schools here till the government takes over. Schools were to
be conducted in village huts.
The project requires about $20,000. $18,000 was donated in Sep 2000 through WAH
but school was started the next year. Most of the money was for teachers’
honoraria. Teachers were chosen from educated locals who were trained to teach.
10 schools and 15 teachers were chosen. Details of the budget can be found on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asha-boston/files
and in the announcement for this meeting.
It appears that a single family of three brothers
runs the operation. This is one concern. There is money spent on infrastructure
like motorcycles, travel etc.
Venkat: Food for 30 days costs Rs. 5000. Light and
water for 30 days costs Rs. 7000. We
don’t know how many people are resource people. The accounts seem cooked up.
Nilanjan: Difference between last year and this
year?
Melli: Expansion to more schools.
Nilanjan: Since WAH is the only donor, would the
schools stop if WAH stopped donating?
Melli: Government will take over eventually.
Nil: We need to know when the government will take
over and whether the project will be sustainable.
Mel: We have yet to find a really sustainable
project. However, the hope is that the govt will take over eventually. Only
exception is Sandeep’s project.
Mel: In many ways, this is a professional ngo since
they have motorcycles and other infrastructure.
Nil: Projects should not be in multiple WAHs.
Mel: A discussion for this happened on asha-wide. It
was decided that it’s ok to have projects in multiple WAHs.
Nil: When do we stop funding them?
Mel: We start telling them now to get sustainable.
Nil: We should not increase funding to them each
year because that is not a path to sustainability.
Ram, Ravi: No school is sustainable because every
school comes through govt money.
Ram: We could split the schools among chapters and
each chapter funds a school.
Mel: That is possible but it is a logistical
nightmare.
Ram: WAH itself is an uncomfortable concept because
a few people vote on donating large sums of money. If we don’t want WAH, we
should vote no for every project.
Mel: I agree. I’m all for stopping WAH for a year.
Nil: How do you select people for teachers?
Mel: It says in the document, a village meeting was
held.
Dil: It does not appear that we want to support this
project.
Ran: Do we feel comfortable voting on this?
Mel: I feel this may be due to the fact that we
didn’t have enough time to absorb all the information. I will upload these
files and we can go through them. We can have an email vote on whether we want
to present this project to Asha-wide.
Dil: If we are against the idea of WAH, why present
a project at WAH?
Mel: Because we were the project sponsors for WAH 2000
and we’re the best candidates to do it.
Nil: We shouldn’t be doing this out of guilt.
Mel: We didn’t take a vote earlier on whether we
want to be a part of WAH.
Ram, Dil: Then, we should go ahead with an email
vote by March 13th.
TASK [Melli] Upload files related to UMBVS and
initiate an email vote.
Questions from Asha-Boston:
2. The numbers appear
blown up, especially the ones outlined above.
3. One family in the villages seems to supervise
the entire operation.
March 8th, 2002
hi folks,
I understand there were
several questions on the Urmul proposal for WAH at
the last meeting. If you can
let me and Sagar know, we'll try to get the
answers for you.
The proposal itself is at
http://www.ashanet.org/mit/Public/www/Projects/Wah2000/Urmul/Urmul.html
(the second year funding is
what is being requested). Urmul is working on
revising some of the budget
numbers based on feedback from Raj Chauhan (from
NYC/NJ who visited them
recently) and lessons learns from the first year.
I'd request everyone to base
their decision on the merits and de-merits of
the project and not out of
any sense of pity or guilt or obligation. To me,
Urmul is doing solid work
and deserves to be supported on the basis of its
work alone.
To provide some context,
even though the project got funded from WAH-2000,
it was only in summer of
2001 that the schools got started due to delays in
sending the funds to them.
So the only update that the group could have
provided us (which they did)
in 2000-2001 was that they are starting the
process of teacher
selection. After the school year started, I have been
persistently on the case of
getting some volunteers to get the site visit
done (with requests to
Sandeep, Siva, Sagar and Raj). Due to the remoteness
of the location, it took its
time for these to fructify. Now that we have
got back enough by way of
site visit reports, it is like any typical renewal
process we go through where
questions are asked and clarified and if
satisfactory, the decision
to fund continued.
I will work with Sagar and
Raj on some of the questions and get back. Please
do send in any more
questions you have. I will build a web page (with all
the information
consolidated) by tonight and send the pointer.
This exercise will be useful
irrespective of the outcome of any
WAH-discussion.
thanks,
srikanth
March 8th, 2002
Hi all,
As we discussed last meeting, the goal is to try and understand
the
UMBVS project a bit
more. I have conveyed to Srikanth our
discussion.
Whether its submitted to WAH or not, I would like to suggest that
Boston take up stewardship
of this project - that has been a
bit lacking here (as has
been for many WAH projects). If that
suggestion is OK, then we
should understand the project more, and let
us try and see whether this
can be submitted as a WAH project this
year. Files are asha-boston --> files -->
WAH projects.
UMBVS-mails.txt is a summary of mails that has been posted on
this
project recently on asha-projects. THey are ordered - most recent
mail is at the top, so start
reading from the bottom.
Melli
March
11th, 2002
Hi all,
Let us try and get some of our questions answered by Srikanth,
and Sagar and Raj who have visited the project ... I only got these questions
from the minutes. I am pretty sure
there were more. Could people who had
questions, post them? THe material is
all on Asha-Boston files section, so please go through them and post questions
...
1. Can WAH provide the money
in time for the 2002-03 school year?
2. The numbers appear blown
up, especially the ones outlined above.
3. One family in the
villages seems to supervise the entire
operation.
Nilanjan, in the vote can
you have as options: yes, no, and not
enough information. (instead of clubbing everything as no).
I am going to try and get an
extension from the WAH 2002 folks. I
feel bad that this project will fall through the cracks essentially because we
were lax in getting reports and haven't had the time to read what we have.
Melli
March 12th, 2002
Srikanth,
Please comment on using WAH
as a continued source of financing for a project v/s a one time financing
option. This therefore is not a typical project in that context. This is a
project requiring large amounts of investment which ostensibly keeps getting
bigger and bigger each year and no end in site.
Further for this project
specifically, what do you think about the plans for this school to require less
and less funding from the WAH process. The budget indicates increase in their
dependence rather than a decrease. If the school fails if we withdraw WAH
funding then in my opinion it is just a matter of time before WAH funding would
dry out for this project. How long can WAH sustain this school and is there a
really good reason doing for this? Are we temporarily propping up an idea that
requires too much money and doesn't provide much returns--to the children and
to Asha.
Finally, what is different
in this project compared to other projects Asha considers that it requires
special attention through WAH? Can you comment on what our funding has brought
us in the past year. In general there is some concern of the scope of this
project (too huge) and the results (not too many). Nothing really stands out in
this project that justifies renewed funding.
This is my personal opinion
and not that of Asha-Boston. I know you will disagree with me. So I am waiting
to hear your analysis.
Nilanjan
March 12th, 2002
Hi All,
I looked through some of the
files about this project and here are the questions that I have :
. The fact that this project depends on Asha funding for each year
is troubling. Our WAH guidelines state
that we cannot fund the same project in consecutive years. We can manage this year because the project
did not start in time and so it is not on consecutive WAHs. What about next year ? Should we take this project out of WAH and
split it across chapters instead (probably still managed by one chapter) ?
. The total food cost for the various teacher training programmes
come to around $2000. Is this something
that we should discourage ? Why is it
that we are talking about funding food only during training days and not on other
days ? Is it because training is
usually conducted in urban areas where the teachers cannot afford to pay for
the food and this would cause them not to attend the training ? The reason I am asking these questions is
not from the penny pinching
perspective. We can probably use this money in a better
way (which I will write later in this mail)
. Why are we paying for rent for a room that belongs to one of the
UMBVS staff itself. Does this indicate
the lack of community participation if they can't even use a room as an office
!
. The problem that these schools can never get Govt. aid is a
serious one. The fact that the teachers
are just not qualified not only creates this problem but is troubling otherwise
too. Shoule we investigate if there is
a way that these teachers can get a degree while continuing to teach ? Can we encourage to do this by providing
additional stipend (out of the $2000 above !) for those teachers who opt to
continue their education ?
I am not sure what is the
comfort level for this project amongst the Asha Boston volunteers. If it is not very high (which is what it
should be if we recommend a project to WAH) I don't think it is a good idea to
propose this project.
Regards,
Ram.
March 12th, 2002
hi Nilanjan,
thanks for framing the
questions. I attempt to answer some of them below (will put them down on the
website as well). I realize that the best way to have discussed these would
have been face to face at a meeting, but since that is not an option for me
I've set up a bridge number tomorrow from 9PM EST-9:45 PM EST to discuss this
in a little more detail. The number is
440-389-9715 (ext 351).
Sagar will also join in. I hope a lot of the volunteers can join in.
Before we ask ourselves the
question of whether this project has something special that it could be
proposed for WAH, I would like to us ask ourselves an even fundamental
questions as to whether it is has something special to be approved as a regular
project of our chapter. Because a WAH project is like a regular chapter project
but for the fact that its scale is much
larger both in terms of funds
required and the number of children it is going to benefit.
On the question of recurring
costs, there is a section in the WAH guidelines doc that Melli sent which says:
"Projects can have
Recurring costs, and multi-year funding requests (limited to a maximum of three
years). In case of the projects that have the FCRA, the money will be allocated
year wise. If the organization has to apply for a one time FCRA, money for all
the years will be allocated as a one time payment".
There was a substantial discussion
on this point on the asha-projects egroup (we should have more Asha Boston
volunteer presence on it), and the conclusion was that rather than exclude
projects with recurring costs, the chapter should submit a proposal for all the
years together. In case of Urmul, what this means is that the request could be
for the next two years
together.
On the question of long-term
sustainability of the project, this is what the original proposal had to say
and something which we accepted as plausible at that time:
"The situation after
three years:
We hope to establish network
between and set up an informal group of local persons that are interested that
their area benefit from such education centers.
But the only long term
strategy would be to enroll the local administration to take over from us, and
building upon the work we have laid the foundation for, reach out to more and
more children. We surely do not have and cannot access the kind of resources
and infrastructure they have at their command.
So sensitising the Govt.
towards the backwardness of the area and the its crying need, is what we hope
to achieve at the end of this three year period".
Clearly, they had thought of
this and had A plan to deal with it. The plan was workable in the old framework
of the Rajasthan govt and is not workable according to the new policy. This is
not something we could have anticipated nor could have Urmul. Raj had this to
say about it
“Initially, UMBVS’ plan was
to operate these schools for about 3 years and then convert the schools to
government schools. This was possible
under earlier government schemes. Few of the schools are already operating in
vacant government buildings. However,
with a change in government at state-level in Rajasthan the Congress-I
government has introduced “the Rajiv
Gandhi Paathshala”
scheme. Under this scheme hundreds of
primary schools have been opened in Rajasthan.
However, this scheme has also mandated that teacher of government have
at least at B Ed. (Bachelor’s in Education) or STC (2-year teacher
training). This implies that teachers
in school run by UMBVS would need to have this minimum training. All the
current trained
local teachers would be
unemployed if the schools were converted to government schools”.
There was a point brought up
about teachers being underqualified and questioning their ability to teach. I
believe the true measure of this is whether the children are learning or not.
It is clear from Raj’s report and Sagar’s report that they are. The Probe
report has a section on the type of
teaching that goes on in the
Marushalas of Urmul.
http://www.ashanet.org/mit/Public/www/Projects/Wah2000/Urmul/visits/UrmulPROBE.htm
It is a credit to them that
they understand the fundamental need of teaching to be child-centric.
We have had discussions and
articles in the past where it was emphasized that a lot of the problems
plaguing our remote schools is that the teachers are from outside towns and
cities and even though they might have a fancy education degree, they neither
show up for work consistently nor identify with the social background of the
children. Also, organizations like TNSF,
Pratham have repeatedly
demonstrated that even local teachers with class 8 or class 10 pass, with good
training, can perform as well, if not better, than teachers with advanced
degrees. I feel that we should be encouraging this trend.
srikanth
March 13th, 2002
Hello all,
My opinions on some of the questions raised:
1) "One family seems to
supervise the entire operation? Renting the room instead of getting it for
free." The situation is as follows: The operation
is run by URMUL and the individual in charge is Madan Lal Sharma who is the
education coordinator for URMUL. I met him at the village and he was very much
involved with the running of the schools. The family you refer to is the
family of the Sarpanch, who
has at least 3 brothers. Of this family 2 of the brothers are involved. One
brother is the junior supervisor. The second brother is renting a room in the
village to the project.The primary supervisor/ coordinator is Ayub Khan, who is
not related to the family.
Although it is possible that
the family or the village residents could give a room for free, the situation
on the ground is that the primary beneficiaries of these schools are the
farmers and their children who live on the outside of the villages in the
desert they are trying to farm. The were landless and are mostly of Scheduled
Caste/Scheduled Tribe classification. They are not the people of Mohangarg, and
therefore I doubt have the high level of community support from the village.
They do have the support from their own community of farmers, who are very
interested in their children's education and are involved in the running of the
schools, and from URMUL.
Therefore, for URMUL to do
it's work, maybe, and we can confirm this, they need the Sarpanch's help and
assistance. But the fact remains that the family is not running the show. URMUL
is. With Madan Lal Sharma, and Ayub Khan as the main people. On the side, URMUL
is getting the use of at least one classroom (that I visited) from the
government for free.
2)"The results of
initial funding". The measurable results are as follows:
a) 10 schools set up. The
setting up of 10 schools includes, building the schools with the help of the
parents/ community. Setting up the parent committee and getting them to meet
regularly. Going to the parents living in their houses in the desert and
encouraging them and educating them on the need to send their children to
school. Actual teaching, where class is held from 10:30 to 4:30 every day, and
the children attend and are learning. The teachers meet
together and create tests
for all students to monitor progress
b) 15 Teachers trained.
Training includes: how to manage the classroom, which means: tracking
attendance of each student, steps to take to if student is not visiting,
creating lesson plans, following lesson plans, monitoring daily progress,
meeting with parents, documenting progress, testing students. I believe the
teachers are capable and educated enough to teach the children in the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd grades. Additionally, with the excellent education structure (progress
monitoring, lesson plans, etc) that has been created by URMUL, the job of
teaching is less
complicated and more thorough.
c) additional
infrastructure. Supplies for 10 schools and their students. Include books,
bags, mats, blackboards, charts, cupboard for storage, sports equipment.
d) Monitoring system for
each school. Ayub Khan and Magga Ram spend their time monitoring the progress
of each school, including school visits. They hold meetings for all the teacher
to address concerns and resolve issues. Teachers have this channel to resolve
problems they cannot themselves.
3) "Numbers seem to be
on the higher side" This may be the case and needs to be looked into.
Someone had mentioned food and training costs are high. They may be. We need to
look into whether they have a cook or are they catering? What is the cost of a
meal in Pokharan? For example, at the initial teachers training (15 teachers)
last year, the cost for food for 30 days was Rs. 24000. If we break that up, it
comes to Rs. 1600 per teacher per month, or Rs. 53.30
per day. I think that is a
bit high but by about 5+ rupees a day. In other words I'm assuming a meal costs
Rs. 15, and so I would be more comfortable with Rs. 45 per day. But to deal
with these numbers, we need to know what URMUL assumptions are.
I believe that we can
effectively work with URMUL on the financial side. I don't believe that URMUL
is out to cheat us. But we have to challenge them on the numbers.
4)"Long term
funding": I think it is clear that WAH cannot support this project long
term. As stated in earlier emails, URMUL needs to find long term sustained
funding for this work. I will be working with them to make sure this happens.
5) "Long term
planning": As mentioned in the earlier email, the original plan was to
convert these schools to government schools. Newer information tells us that
for that to happen the teachers need to be B Ed. educated or a 2 year teacher
training course. So we have a problem with the original plan. The possible
solutions that I can think of are a) either URMUL
hires teachers with the
relevant qualifications or
b) we train the current
teachers or
c) wait for the government
to set up schools and then transfer the children to them and shut down the Asha
schools.
Solution a: Hiring teachers with B Ed. or 2 year qualification from outside, and then asking them to work in these schools in the middle of the desert is unrealistic and undesirable. Unrealistic because people generally don't prefer to work in the middle of the desert. Undesirable because they will not be locals, and we significantly reduce the community relationships and involvement that we have now, with the teachers being from the local area. Solution b: This is a possibility, but we need to work out funding, feasibility, timeframe issues. This also depends on when the govt. is planning to get involved. My guess will be not soon. So we have some time to implement training for the teachers. We could have a staggered approach, where a few teacher go for
training every year, or
maybe they can do it part time. Solution c: Sounds like a good option. But will
the govt. start any schools in this area? and when? There are other solutions that can be thought of and implemented.
The next step for me, is to contact URMUL and ask them for a detailed plan on
what they think the long term situation should be and what should be
done about it.
In Summary, I think URMUL
and the schools are doing a very good job at educating the children, which is
the most important thing. Issues that are mentioned above exist, as issues do
in every project, I'm sure. Some issues are there due to changes in the
government policy, some are there because of lack of sustained communication in
the past. But the fact remains that
the work being done is
valuable and necessary in the area. We have had the fortune to get lots of
information from URMUL (lately, when they were asked) and have had 2
informative site visits.
This information and the
visits show that the work has produced amazing results, in my opinion, and
overall the project is worth funding by WAH at this time.
Please let me know if there
are additional questions!
Cheers,
-Sagar
March 19th, 2002
hey guys,
I created a website for the
WAH-2002 Urmul proposal.
http://www.ashanet.org/mit/Public/www/Projects/Wah2002/Urmul/Urmul.html
The QA section will be
updated as we go along. It is a good start, but since
I culled this from multiple
sources (some past, some present) there might be
some inconsistencies yet.
Please bear with me as I try to make everything
consistent in the next day
or two.
I sincerely hope Boston will
come forward to take stewardship of this
project for WAH.
thanks,
srikanth
March 22nd, 2002
Based on Poll results
Asha-Boston should recommend UMBVS for WAH 2002. The final vote was 5 for, 3
against, 3 abstain.
Melli-- Can you follow up on
this. I will be out of town until Monday and will not get to send/check email
Thanks
Nilanjan