Women’s Association of Developmental Association WADA

March 3rd, 2002

Dilip Warrier

 

Donors wanting to route money through Asha to benefit from the tax-deduct status. Women’s Association of Developmental Association. Started in 1993 by a group of mostly upper middle class groups. Started with seminars and information sessions. Started with 2-3 members and have now grown to 40 regular members. In 1996 started work with one of the clusters (JJ clusters) in the Delhi area. These are slums of migrant workers and some of the poorest people in Delhi. About one-third being refugees from Bangladesh. Ignored for a while but recently being recognized buy the Delhi Slum Division Board. The implications are that they cannot be relocated without adequate relocation plans. Over the last 3-5 years, WADA involved with these people on a day-to-day way. Educational aspect is that they have primary schools (2) for the children of this area. About 75 children in each school. In addition to this they have: vocational training for women, legal awareness classes for the women, distribute blankets in the winter (most expensive part of their budget and need to give them out every year; a big part of their budget, approx. Rs. 50,000). Also some amount paid to medical camps and medical information. Apart from all of these activities, they also have micro-credit units to the group of people. Usually in the range of 1000-5000 Rs. towards small events in their lives. The return on this has been particularly poor and they don’t expect a return on this. Education is about 16,000/month ($300; salaries and honorarium for doctors. These schools will be taken over by the Delhi Public schools in about a couple of years. The amount being routed is $2000.00.

Issues Discussed:

Ø      Do we want to do this at all? Not only just this project but also others.

Ø      We should have a site visit planned over the next couple of years.

Ø      How many have we done in the past? – Have done this before, e.g. SEED (about $6000.00 a year). SEED particularly different, as it’s a KNOWN person and project. Couple of years back we had a project where there was a proposal to route money. In that instance, there was a thorough review process before it was released. These usually were for projects that were known by Asha-Boston. So far it has been small amounts. A number of other projects were discussed.

Ø      This was a wonderful segue into the next topic….

 

 

WADA: 2 abstains, 3 no site visit and 6 yes site visit.

TASK: [Dilip] Get a site visit for WADA arranged.

 

 

 

 

 

Project Specific Donations Guidelines.

All for NEW project-specific donations:

 

1. Donor doesn’t need to have a history with Asha-Boston.

2. Any new project, we need to get a starting fund of $1000.00 irrespective of the number of people donating to making up this amount.

3. Normal priority to the project – first come first serve basis

4. One Asha volunteer should be involved

5. Give decision within 3 months

6. If project not approved, the entire amount will go to the Asha general funds

7. Suggestion: that we would like the donors to get involved with Asha

8. Continuity and Sust.: If sustainability component, the donors STRONGLY recommended to fund multiple years

9. If this project is really good, Asha will continue supporting this project, so the review will be as rigorous as a normal Asha project (hence covers all regular specifications as a regular Asha project) – this is an internal guideline for Asha. For Donors, the projects that will have multiple years of funding will be more likely to be considered.

10. Asha as an independent entity will do a site visit; before the money is given. Someone who is objective to all cases will do this.

11. No limit on the number of project-specific donations received.

 

OLD PROJECTS being conducted as a project specific donation:

 

  1. No specific guidelines as for the new projects.
  2. Any request from a donor to make changes in the project that proposal will be treated as a new project proposal and it will go through the rigorous project review.
  3. If money has already been assigned to a project, any funds donated will not be given for the same year. It will roll over to the next year. If a second instalment is due, the donation will be used towards the second instalment.

 

These will be treated as Asha-stars ventures.