Attendees: Ravi, Gaurav, Sanjeev, Santosh, Vijay Bhai, Brajendra Bhai and Neelima.


Questions:

Q: What are the recent developments at ASS? What is the present situation? What are the steps taken after the meeting held on Oct 1st.
A: Brajendra Bhai used to manage the finances. He used to receive the money directly from the asha India account. There were some discrepancies in the financial records. The payments and vouchers did not match due to which an enquiry was conducted.

Q: How will the school run? How will you co-ordinate the duties? Who will look after finances?
A: Vijay Bhai will supervise the work. Brajendra along with teacher Mr.Om Prakash will continue to work for the co-ordination of the school. He will however not handle finances any longer.

Q: What about the temporary construction that you had mentioned about?
A: They have not proceeded with construction right now because the land on which the school is functioning right now does not belong to Asha.

Q: How will this affect the children?
A: There is no proper protection from rain and heat so there will be some inconvenience. There has to be some sort of permanent construction. Asha- India along with Asha- Austin can try to work out a solution for this. (Vijay Bhai)
We will try to carry out some temporary construction work with minimum possible expense. For now there is some protection from rain and heat so that the children don’t suffer. If Asha-India can get the land registered fast we can take up construction of a
permanent structure. (Brajendra Bhai)

The budget will come through Asha-India and we will follow whatever budget they give us. (Ravi, Sanjeev)

Q: We would like at least 1-2 teachers to join us whenever we have conference calls in future so that all the teachers in the school are also aware of whats happening.

Q: How do you plan to construct the tin shed for which the expenditure was projected as Rs. 20,000?
A: A room with walls of 4-inch thickness and 8-ft high with a partition will be constructed. It can be used to put all the books and other stuff.

Q: Has the hand pump been installed?
A: Not yet, it will be done soon.

Q: What about the balance salary to teachers? Has it been paid to them?
A: Most of the teachers were paid all the balance salary on October 1st. the total amount due to all of them put together was Rs. 39,750. Now the only thing remaining is salary for October which will be paid this month end.

Q: How much was each teacher paid?

Q: Why is it that some teachers were paid money in full and some were paid partly?
A: When we hired the teachers I told them I would pay them only Rs.500 per month since they would be teaching only for 2-3 months. There are 3-4 different categories of teachers and based on that we have different pay scales. (Brajendra)

Henceforth, there will be only 2 categories- Senior and Junior teachers. A senior teacher will get paid Rs. 1500 and a junior teacher will get Rs. 750. (Ravi)

Q: Who does the bee keeping/ farming benefit? The children or the teachers?
A: The teachers are trained and we are doing this so that we can be self-sufficient and for improvement of community (???) (Brajendra)

The SAC project is mainly carried out exclusively for the education of the children. We are accountable to donors who pay to sponsor children and so the money has to be spent only for the children and not for other programs. (Ravi)

Q: How much have you been able to achieve through bee keeping/ Farming?
A: We were able to make 10 boxes of honey.

Q: How much money was spent for this project?
A: A total of Rs. 50,000 for both bee keping and organic farming.

Q: How much will you get if you sell the boxes?
A: If old in wholesale it would sell for for Rs. 70/ Kg and if sold in retail it would be Rs. 120/kg.

Q: What happens to the money you get from bee keeping/ farming?
A: Everything will be credited back to Asha account.


Brajendra Bhai said he got an approval from Asha- Austin to take up the organic farming project. Asha-Austin has given no such approval to him. He said he asked us about bee keeping many times, but didn’t get a positive response from us and that’s why he went
ahead and took it up. Ravi made it clear to him that the reason we didn’t respond was because we were not interested in taking it up in the first place.
Vijay bhai was requested to visit ASS frequently and keep us updated about it to which he agreed. Very soon there will be e-mail facility at ASS too so that communication with them will be better.

Q: Should we continue supporting this project or should we just close down the school? If we close down the school the kids can be easily absorbed into the Govt. school.
A: We should try out this system for at least 6 months more. Since Brajendra will not be handling finances any more there may be certain improvements in the school. We will also be including the teachers in all the discussions and so even they will know what’s
happening. After about 6 months if we still don’t see any positive results then we can consider closing down the school.
The main problem is with the older children especially girls who are too old to attend Govt.schools. So ASS will certainly be helpful to them.

Conclusions:

This can be discussed in the weekly Asha meeting and based on everyone’s opinion it can be decided once and for all whether to continue with this project or close it down.

As per the latest budget it is estimated that the cost to sponsor each child would be only $50 per year and so we can inform our donors that the $10 they are paying for 1 child right now can be used to support the same child for 2 years or they can choose to support 2 children instead.

We will share all the information subtly but accurately with the donors so that they are all well informed about it.