Minutes of the Meeting of December 19, 1999.

Attendees: Dhara Amin, Hitten Zaveri, Rupa Athreya, Shipra Bunjun,
Soumitra Basu, Vinod Srihari, Vinod Viswanath, and Zia-ur Rahman.

1.Odissi Dance Program.
        Discussed the logistics of the event. Publicity material
        yet to arrive from Sonal Vora. Kakoli will do the posters
        once she gets the Publicity material. Shipra and Vinod_S
        are overall incharge of the program. VV and Bratin will
        do the coordination of posters and ticket sales. Ticket
        prices to be set at $8 - student and $15 otherwise. A
        good sense of pricing may be obtained from Shila Doshi.
        Maybe we can have a slide show before and after the
        dance show, scenes of Asha and India etc.

2.Project Anandan!!!
        Decided to fund the Anandan project in Calcutta. Details
        of the Anandan project are available on the projects page
        on the Asha website. Bratin personally talked to the people
        running the project and sent in his views. Bratin is planning
        to visit them before he comes back. He is to get a sense of
        how they can use a possible $500 funding.

3.Prospective Projects.
        Hitten and VV are to visit prospective project sites when
        they are in India. Prospective projects under consideration
        are...
                Rajmachi,Maharashtra /* Aditya's link */
                National Association for the Blind, Visnagar
                Lok Mitra
                /* link for these two is Varsha Shah */
                Lok Bharti /* Dr. Bhatt's contact */
                Saurashtra Education Fund, Rajkot
                BITS Pilani NSS group
                Sirakukal- Chennai Project.

4.Dwight Hall Membership.
        We have membership (thanks to Rupa's hard work). We are not
        clear on all the benefits we obtain. We have about 3000
        photo copies free. We may find funding to the tune of $800
        which can be used for administrative purposes. Need to come
        up with a proposal with a budget to obtain these funds.
        As a parallel issue, Shipra is going to look into getting
        GPSS funding for Asha.

5.Asha Calendars.
        Calendars are still expected. They seem to be delayed in the
        press. It was decided that we still go ahead and get all 80
        calendars despite the delay.

6.Thank You notes (IFF and donations).
        The notes with receipts are to be sent out on Wednesday night
        by Shipra, Zia and VV.

7.United Way Membership.
        This is not going to happen this year. The general sense was
        that we need to be established for about 2 years and have
        an internal audit, before we try to apply. The idea was to
        drop this for now, and anyway we cannot apply until 2001 now.
        As a side issue, being a fund raising organization in CT state
        we need to register with the CT State Dept of Consumer
        Protection. But we are exempt since we are not registered with
        IRS and since we use the nationwide ASHA tax id.

8.Update on Financial Status.
        We have $2464.80 in the bank now. About $100 more to be deposited.
        This is net amount after the Midnapore project check was cashed.
        Hitten suggested that we need to breakdown our accounts to
        indicate what amount was through fund raising events and what
        amount was through private donations.

9.Update from AshaWide.
        Zia gave an update on the phone conversation that he, Hitten and
        VV had with DP and Richa. More details are available here.

10.Get Stuff from India and sell here.
        Soumitra suggested people going home bring back handicrafts and
        such items from India and sell them at events here. We can keep
        the cost low initially by letting volunteers buy on their own
        accord.