Here is a summary of the meeting held on April 28th, 2009:

1. Legal
• Discussed various aspects of Indian NGOs including citizenship requirements, property requirements and FCRA limitations.
2. Educational Programme – May
• Safwan to be in charge of the programme for May.
• We will working on assembling him a team to run the programme during the month. Volunteers are greatly needed.
• Ideas:
• simple games
• coloring programmes
• reading programmes
3. Plans for May
• Navyatha, Shilpa, Nivedita, Sriram – to continue legal work.
• Rifa – Educational research in Bangalore
• Sriram and Nivedita to create a promotional packet
• Mounica – to research local NGO
• Thinesh – protein packets
• Vasundhra – hygiene research, contact NGOs in Delhi, and to research vocational programme.
• Everyone promised to come up with a lesson plan and to research idealist.org
• We made a facebook group for active members to discuss the projects they are working on. All are invited but it will be an active discussion to work out the current business of Sangam India. To join, please contact us.

1. The Educational Programme is scheduled for this Saturday, 4:30. The Educational Committee is in charge of developing a programme.



2. We hope that we can arrange at least two days of our Educational Programme over the month of May, when most of our members will not be in Chennai. We plan on contacting various members who will be in the city over this month. The Educational Committee will help to develop the programme for these weekends as well.
3. We hope that we can get permission to use the nearby laundry facility where we held our previous health camps for running the programme and we will talk with the people in charge about this possibility.
4. We talked about developing a programme for older kids to get them more involved. Some ideas were:
• To get them involved by giving them responsibility and putting them in charge.
• To ask them for their input.
• To designate one of our members to be specifically in charge of them.
5. We discussed some ideas for the Educational Programme and our members will research for more ideas over the May break.
6. Finally, we set some goals for this May:
• Acquire NGO status
• Create lesson plans for the next few months
• To talk with other NGOs in member’s home cities that are doing similar work and learn more.

Today’s lunch meeting covered the following:

• Educational Programme is on for this Saturday, at 4:30PM. The Education committee will develop the activities for this weeks program.
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• Data entry work is still on hold. If you can volunteer to help us get it done, please let us know.
• Several short skits have been written by student volunteers from Texas. These are going to be translated into Tamil so we can have the kids perform them.
• Legal: We are talking to a lawyer from both the United States and from India to help us get this work done.
• Bridge: we are still trying to find a good way to help us cross the stream for our activities in the slum.

After some delay, here is a summary of the meeting held on April 7th, 2009:

1. Legal team presented a few notes on the differences between the Indian and American processes of obtaining NGO status.
2. Educational programme planned for Saturday (April 11th, 2009), details to come after Educational team meets.
3. Vocational training leads have to be followed up on.
4. Data entry is still on hold, we need to find someone to take charge of it.
5. Planning on a General Body meeting sometime next week.
6. The Educational Committee now consists of:
• Bhavya
• Nithya
• Nithya Naram
• Sahithi
• Vishnupriya
• Pranusha
• Saikiran

A summary of today’s meeting:

• Saturday’s programme – to be held on April 4th, 2009. It will follow last week’s agenda.
• Meetings with the Community Medicine HOD
• We are going to compile the statistical data collected thus far so we can analyze it and use it to see the progress we have made. Apoorvaa and Lalitha volunteered for this task.
• Pediatrician – We were advised to bring a pediatrician to survey the children there, as, when Dr. Thinesh visited to the slum 2 weeks ago, a large number of protein energy malnutrition cases were found. Bhavya and Lalitha would inquire into this.
• Vocational training – we are trying to find some programs in this area. Vasundhra has been doing research in this as well.
• Meeting – we are thinking of having a general body meeting early next week.
• Collecting data from the municipality – regarding the population demographics.
• Protein Packets – Dr. Thinesh to research the feasibility, cost, and contents of locally available protein supplements.
• Bridge – a large number of members have requested an easier way to cross the stream. Apoorvaa is now in charge of finding and acquiring a plank that can be used for this purpose.
• Legal – Thinesh to do some research on this front. In addition, Navyatha and Shilpa are to continue research comparing American and Indian NGOs and to give a summary of this information at the next meeting.

• Requirements for an NGO status- intricacies and the road blocks- summarized by Shilpa
• Legal Committee to recruit new members, in order to expand. So if you can help in anyway please contact Shilpa or Navyatha.
• The visit scheduled for 28th March’09 is cancelled.
• Thinesh, suggested provision of protein packets for the children, which will hopefully help in absolving the trouble of malnutrition.
• Health camp is a possibility in the near future, if we can work synergistically with an NGO to organize it.
• Appointment with CM HOD for 26/03/09- Rifa
• Vasundara to check on Chennai ITI
• Education planning committee to expand too.
• Malar to bring a financial update for the next meeting.
• Legal committee to meet on 25th March ’09.

• Trip on 18/03/09- With Thinesh, to deal with the acute spread of conjunctivitis
• Summary of trip on 14/03/09- Bhavya- on the educational program ; Rifa- survey on health and vocational training
• Cases being followed up: CSOM (unsafe type) ; Post-partum complications.
• We worked on plans for the upcoming trip on Saturday, primarily involving the educational program for children.
• Activities to mainly revolve around team-building.
• Objectives for the Educational Program were laid down; In order of priority they are: Health awareness, team-building, values, citizenship, etiquette, creativity enhancing activity.
• Vandhana and Vasundhra to work on translation of skits to Tamil; the skits are to be enacted by the children in their allotted teams/groups.
• Meeting with the HOD of Community Medicine is also on the cards.

Plans to unfold over upcoming months:

• Women’s employment (vocational training)- To contact Andhra Mahila Sabha, Chennai ITI- Ayesha
• Make arrangements for the basic amenities such as blankets, utensils, story books for the children- Collective effort
• Work synergistically with the local tutor to make lessons more fun for the children.
• Bridge construction- Only to subsidize the cost- to encourage a self sustaining attitude
• Field Trip- As an incentive only for children with 100% attendance at school.
• Mounica gave us a briefing on the Panchayat School and the details of it’s functioning.
• Shift visits from weekends to weekdays- for the convenience of the Sangam volunteers
• Decide on a lawyer to work for the NGO status- Shilpa

Plans for the week ahead (till Sunday 15th March’09)

• 11/03/09 (Wednesday)- People with ailments that require immediate attention are to come to SRMC for a check up.
• 15/03/09 (Sunday)- Games, recreational activities and lesson plans to be worked out- Bhavya, Mounica, Navyatha.

This meeting was held on 27/01/09

Members present: Nivedita, Sriram, Malar, Shilpa, Pamela, Nazneen, Vasundara, Rifa, Vandana, Navyatha, Lalita.

Following are the minutes of the meeting.

Administration

• Legal
1. To verify details of land ownership NGO status requirements & the red tape associated with it –Shilpa
2. Voter ID and ration card availability –Pamela
3. To get written permission from SRMC Admin.-Rifa

• Finance
1. To open a Sangam India bank A/C
2. Plan to introduce voucher system, if a member needs money for any activity.
3. Investment for activities involving children on the cards.
4. Malar to take care of all of the above

• H R
1. Awareness Campaign for SRU campus, team of 5 formed.
2. Approach Dean for the banner- Rifa

Ground Work

• Event Co-ordination
1. Targeted activities for men, women & children-every week -Nazneen
2. Lesson plans for children- Apta
3. Skits for children (Eng and Tamil)-Vandana

• Community Liaison
1. Follow up files for each block-Pamela
2. Recruit more Tamil speakers -Vandana

• Infrastructure
1. Vocational training (for women- Vasundara
2. Sanitation put on hold till legal issues are worked out.

Also lined up,

• A meeting with the HOD of The Dept. of Community Medicine on 29th Jan’09.
• A trip to Coimbatore to learn about the intricacies of working as an NGO- In the very near future.
• A trip to New Delhi to meet with and learn from the people running a successful NGO.

Ayesha has been appointed to the Board, by unanimous approval of the members present at the meeting. This step was taken to avoid a dead-lock on an issue in future.Ayesha will assist any dept. that requires her help the most.