http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ashasv-vol/surveys?id=2997067 The following ashasv-vol poll is now closed. Here are the final results: POLL QUESTION: Do you approve funding for SShrishti Learning Center for Rs.9,79,950 for June 2010 to May 2011? Budget and other related documents can be found at https://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=703 CHOICES AND RESULTS - Yes, 13 votes, 100.00% - No, 0 votes, 0.00% Attendees: Sudhir*, Kanchan*, Pankaj, Jay*, Anshu, Niharika, Madhu, Vivek, Meena, Bhanu, Manoj, Venki, Smitha Sshristi Learning center renewal: Pankaj ---------------------------------------- - School in Delhi, started in 2003 - 2 main centres: Ladli and learning centre - both formal education - Ladli is LKG - Learning centre is UKG and 1-4 - Recently started 4 more centres in Rajasthan, Haryana and UP - In 2009 they started a door step school - Funded by SV since last year - Last year funding was about $20K, 2K from Berkeely, and rest from SV - Migrant workers is the community, they move to find work, thus children's education is interrupted - Children put through accelerated learning program to bring them upto the class of their age level - Total enrollment is about 350 kids - They shifted the learning center to Kishangarh. Both centers are in the same locality. It helps them to manage the centers better and there is more space. In the old center they didn't have more space. Clearly this new center is better. - The downside is this is a rented building. But we don't have the transportation cost like last year. - Last year the total center had 89 children (350 is the total number of students across all centers) - Spoken english, GK, recitation and music classes have been introduced. - 17 children cleared NIOS exam. They have got admitted into govt schools. - Social worker was recruited for the program to get a better outreach. - Some folks ran half ran marathon and they raised money for Sshristi. They raised over 1 and half lakhs. - The teacher attrition has been an issue. They had an attrition rate of 20% - They discontinued the vocational training program. Mainly because of extra staff to run the program. It was a adhoc program and they did not have the staff to structure it well. Q: Do you know what happened to the children who were coming to vocational training? A: No information as of yet. - Kanchan, new volunter is visiting Delhi in Sept. She would like to visit the project. She will talk to Pankaj offline. Q: Can we have Anshu present site visit sometime? A: Sure Q: About the half marathon - is it similar to what we do or is it different? A: Yes it is very similar. They have always focused on doing annual fundraiser every year. 2 years ago they did a film festival. - Pic of new bldg was shown Eval doc: - Find a local agent to fund transportation cost - no longer applicable - Backup plan for renewal of lease - no longer applicable because they moved to another bldg - Find a local donor to fund computer teacher - done - Find an alternative source for project coordinators salary - they are planning a fund raising event - Plan to send 22 kids to NIOS exam - They had only 19 kids and 17 children cleared the exam Q: The school is mostly for kids of migrant workers? A: Yes Q: Do the children drop out very often? A: This is more like the migrant families in the local area and the school reaches out to the kids from this background. The reason some children drop out is because the older children may have to care of home and younger kids sometime. Eval doc contd - recommendations: - Use govt schemes like SSA and follow up on it - it is a mind set problem. We need to push them more and help them out to get this done. Hopefully something will happen this year - Social worker to work on getting 20 more kids to the program - Students were added to Ladli. Anshu's site visit: - It was a suprise visit - On the whole it was a positive site visit. Anshu will cover this in detail in a different meeting. - Presented the budget Q: Is Berkeley still involved? A: One volunteer at Sshristi ran a marathon and wanted to donate to this project. Pankaj aksed this volunter to donate through Berkeley because this project was supported by Berkeley. The money was routed to us from Berkeley. Other than this Berkeley is/was not involved in any other way. Q: Is the funding raising situation better in Berkeley? A: Not sure. Pankaj will check. Q: Is the accountant full-time now? A: Yes. The acountant was full time last year too. We decided to fund only part of it. Q: Why is the transportation cost added and increased this year? A: They have a van that is used to do multiple things like bring food etc. It is not transportation cost for transporting children. Q: The cost of fuel has increased more than 3 times. Last year they used the van to transport children other than bringing food etc. A: They have started doorstep school. They may be using the transportation of teachers etc for this doorstep school Q: But we are not funding doorstep school. why are we covering the fuel cost? A: Line item 1 was included other than line item 7 Q: Why has cost of stationery, etc have gone up? A: This year they expect around 100 children. Last year they had around 89 children and hence the increase Q: What happened to social worker salary? A: Not sure why they have not added this year. Social worker was definitely useful. Need to check why it is not included? Q: The teachers' salary increased by 10% but project coordinator's sal increased by 30%. why? A: Last year the project coord sal was Rs. 15000 and we supported only Rs. 12000. So it is not such a big increase. Q: What is Pankaj's recommendation for the budget? A: Things are going ok at the project level. Pankaj will ask them to support their project coord sal and computer teacher salary. The rest of it is best if we can support it. Pankaj will do another iteration of the budget and we will put up a poll.