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Archive for July, 2009

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Focus Group Discussion Tomorrow, July 24th 2009

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Meeting before the survey, July 18th 2009Hi folks!

Tomorrow, we will be conducting a small focus group discussion with the women of the MGR Nagar slum. As you may have read on the SI website, women’s issues and women’s empowerment are a huge part of community improvement and development. Without sufficiently addressing the perceived needs of the community, pushing our own agenda onto the community is ineffective and inappropriate. Through holding a small group discussion with the women, we are hoping to bring out what the women themselves feel to be the issues that should be addressed. I am including the proposed agenda here. If you feel that there are things that should be added, please let me know by tonight, or latest, tomorrow morning around 10. We will go with the final agenda.

Proposed Agenda:

  1. What general concerns do you have about your life?
  2. What are your immediate priorities for issues for which you would like to seek solutions?
  3. Have you previously accessed, received, or attempted to access help in any of these areas?
  4. Do you have any solutions in mind?
  5. What – according to you – is being ‘empowered’?
  6. Do you think you need to save more (financially)?
  7. What is your current source of income and are you interested in any other jobs?
  8. Are you willing to form a group with other women in the community? What timing suits you?

I’m looking forward to receiving input from all of you!

Posted by nivedita in upcoming, Women's Issues | 1 Comment »

Visit to MGR Nagar Slum Tomorrow, July 23

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Tomorrow we are heading on another trip to the MGR Nagar slum where we have two goals:

  • Survey: Our survey last week covered approximately 65 of the 108 houses. We hope to cover more of the houses this week with a team that will be following up with those.  This will be lead by Gautam Bagga.  If you’re planning on coming, please check out the survey, the consent form, and the handout so you can get familiar with them before we start.
  • Focus Group Discussion (FGD): A focus group will be conducted by the ladies who come out tomorrow. We hope to involve the able-minded and proactive members of the community to come together and to discuss their needs and how they can overcome them.  We hope this will be the beginning to a dialogue with the women which will give them a forum to grow and progress.  More about this activity will be available in a later post.  The FGD is being run by Nivedita Gunturi.

We’re always in need of volunteers, so please contact us if you can come!

Posted by sriram in survey, upcoming, Women's Issues | No Comments »

A Note about Internal Structure

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Since there are so many people outside India who want to be involved with Sangam India and have valuable knowledge and insight, we are encouraging them to join the “abroad team”.  The majority of members we have at the moment are from the United States and they have formed roughly along the lines of our team here, with a chairperson, treasurer, and public relations coordinator.  Within the team, there will be people focused on education or healthcare or their respective field of expertise.

In order to synchronize the abroad team’s planning and the Chennai team’s action and implementation, the information will be streamlined and funneled through the US public relations coordinator.  It is more efficient to have one point of contact so we will have one person in charge of passing on information from abroad to India.  As the process is put into action, we will work out the kinks in the system.  The abroad team will be using a wiki to share information and collaborate across country lines.  Please feel free to send us queries and suggestions.

Posted by Priyanka in administrative | No Comments »

Sangam India Around the World

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Around the World

A feature we worked on for the new site was Sangam India – Around the World. We thought of this idea as a way to show potential volunteers (like you, we hope!) what people are doing around the world to aid in our cause.  Over the last few months, people have been involved in developing promotional materials, skits, educational curriculae, and sanitation and development research work.  Volunteers have stepped forward from places like Australia, the UAE, England, and the United States.  Their immense contribution helps us do our job in the most efficient and educated manner.

We hope this map will demonstrate to that regardless of where you live in the world, we’d love to have you involved in our project, and we could certainly use your help in our group.

Thanks to our numerous volunteers from different cities in India as well as around the planet; and we depend on you to run our projects!

Check out: Sangam India – Around the World.

Posted by The Sangam India Team in administrative, promotional, recruitment, website | 4 Comments »

Photo Contribution – Educational Programme, July 11th 2009

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Here are several pictures from our our Educational Programme on July 11th 2009, taken by Katie during her visit.  Thanks for the contribution!

picture perfect

water coloring 3 girls

See the rest of the pictures from this visit in our Gallery!

Posted by The Sangam India Team in education, photos | No Comments »

MGR Nagar Survey

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

This past Saturday, we were able to conduct our survey at our new slum in MGR Nagar. It was an excellent chance for us to make a foray into the community and introduce ourselves to the members of the community as well as to become familiar with the issues in the community.

As the analysis of the survey data is carried out, we will start identifying important issues and trends that we should start addressing immediately.

We’d like to thank everyone who came out for the first time: Dr. Gayathri, Arti, Abdullah, Gayatri, Hari, Ester, Vijay, Anu and Salman. Without the help of all the surveyors, we certainly could not have covered the number of houses we managed.

This Friday, we will be conducting a small focus group discussion with the women of MGR nagar. We are also hoping to complete the survey. We need as many volunteers as possible, so please come out and bring your friends.

Posted by nivedita in survey, visits, Women's Issues | No Comments »

Minutes of the Meeting held on July 21,2009

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
  1. Feedback on the survey:
    • Mostly a success except for a few parameter that need to be revised
    • The inhabitants of the slum were rather co-operative
    • Immediate requirement-sanitation facilities
  2. Plan for the coming weekend
    • Has been shifted to Friday, 24/07/09. Plan on being at the slum by 4:30PM.
    • Objectives: To start with a Focus Group for Women; To complete the survey.

Posted by rifa in meetings | No Comments »

Photos from the Survey, June 18th 2009

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Here’s several photos from the survey, taken by Gautam Bagga, our survey coordinator:

IMG_3301 IMG_3302

IMG_3321 IMG_3348

View the rest of the photos

Posted by The Sangam India Team in photos, survey | No Comments »

Survey: the aftermath

Monday, July 20th, 2009

OK. First of all…THANK YOU! So many people turned up to help us conduct the survey and we made a lot of progress (more than this pessimist had hoped for). All that remains is for me to put the data into some kind of workable and usable format, which could take me up to a week (though I’m hoping that it’ll be less time-consuming than that).

I appreciate that this isn’t the typical work that people imagined doing when they read the Sangam India, but as I’ve mentioned, it’s very important so that we know which direction to go in. We seemed to be building rapport with the community, judging by the number of smiles we got (I managed to photograph a few, so check those out!) and the number of people who were willing to let us complete the survey.

Currently, I’m just putting the data together and I realize that I made a rather huge omission in my previous post. I made it seem like the survey was something that I put together by myself, but that is simply not the case. A more accurate description would be that I pruned the survey down a little from a far more extensive tool devised by Katie Bush, a University of Michigan PhD student who is working in Chennai. So many thanks to her.

Looking through these figures is fairly boring but necessary work. It’ll take me a good few days to get through it but there are already some minor mistakes that I made whilst tweaking that are my headache (roughly 65 times over!) now, so I guess I’d better get back to it. Thanks again for coming out to help us! I’ll write again when I’ve got some impressions from the data.

Posted by Gautam in survey | 1 Comment »

New Website Launch!

Monday, July 20th, 2009

New Website

After almost three months in the making, we are excited to announce the launch of our new website today! Thanks so much to everyone who has been involved. The suggestion of making a new website began about 7 months ago, when Tina Ye, a designer from Boston, MA suggested to make a new site and volunteered to be the one to do it. What emerged from that idea is this website and we hope you all will enjoy it. An immense thanks goes to Tina for her tireless work, long nights, and patient responses to emails for many weeks.

The new website is more than a redesign however. We took this opportunity to write out completely new content for the website, which can be seen under the about and the initiatives sections. This was also a large task that involved many, many people:

Our Logo – written by Tina Ye, who also made us a new logo.
Mission Statement – written by Sriram Ramgopal, Nivedita Gunturi, and Navyatha Mohan.
Our History – written by Priyanka Boghani
Our Model – written by Gautam Bagga
Board Members – written by the board
Initiatives at a Glance – written by Apta Errabelli
Initiatives: Healthcare and Nutrition – written by Sriram Ramgopal
Initiatives: Education and Mentoring - by Rifa Khan, Priyanka Boghani, and Sriram Ramgopal
Initiatives: Hygiene and Sanitation – by Katie Bush
Initiatives: Women’s Issues - by Nivedita Gunturi
Ways to Help – by Priyanka Boghan

In addition, thanks to Adrienne Nobbe for meticulously editing the website for mistakes.

You will also see a new section called Join the Movement – which is about bringing the Sangam message to your city, and how to make a difference in your communities, today.

We hope you all enjoy the new website and please visit often – as you know we work hard to keep the site as up to date as possible. Of course, we’d appreciate your feedback!

Posted by The Sangam India Team in administrative, website | 2 Comments »

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