Minutes of Board Meeting, 27/01/09

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.

Republic Day

Today Nivedita Gunturi, one of our members, gave a short speech at the Flag Raising Ceremony on this Republic Day. She spoke briefly about how our group was formed, the activities that we have done so far, and about our responsibility as youth and residents of India towards people who are underpriviledged.

The audience was composed of many faculty and students from a large number of batches and it was well recieved by everyeone.

We hope that this might increase some awareness about the conditions in slums in India and inspire some to reach out to people who are in need of help.

Happy Republic Day!

Ramavaram Visit, January 25th, 2009

This morning Vasundhra, Ayesha and I took a trip to Ramavaram to say hello to the residents and see how they’ve been doing since the last time we were there. I hadn’t had a chance to visit since October so it was nice to see everyone. Since it is a long weekend because of Republic Day, we weren’t able to get much of a turnout. We went to a few of the houses and spoke with the residents, who were very kind and happy to see us. We visited one gentleman in particular, who has been ill for the past few months, on and off. After speaking with him for a little while, we asked him to come in to our hospital tomorrow morning, at which point we will take him for a medical examination. Starting next week we’d like to visit Ramavaram every week and spend some productive time with the children. We are also hoping to have a focus group soon in order to concentrate our efforts in the direction most needed by the community.

Republic Day Speech

Tomorrow, January 26th, is India's Republic Day. At the Sri Ramachandra University's Flag Raising ceremony tomorrow, members of Sangam India have been invited to give a short speech on our experiences working with people in India.

Please show your support by coming to tomorrow's event! It will be at 8:30 tomorrow, on the Cricket Field.

A small group of people went to the Ramavaram slum today to get in touch with the community there after a long break. Look forward to a post about that later today.

Board Members and Board Meetings for 2009

Board Members
The board members as selected by the group are as follows:

1. Groundwork Chairperson: Nivedita Gunturi
   (ph: 9884340296)
   
1. Event Coordinator:
1. Nazneen Sadurdeen
2. Mounica S.
2. Infrastructure Coordinator:
1. Vasundhra Jain
2. Lalita Kambhampati
3. Community Liaison:
1. Pamela Thirugnyanam
2. Vandhana Sundaram
2. Administrative Chairperson: Sriram Ramgopal
   (ph: 9444441428)
   
1. Financial:
1. Malarvizhi Ravichandran
2. Naveena Kananathan
2. Legal:
1. Shilpa Menon
   
2. Navyatha Mohan
   
3. Human Relations:
1. Rifa Khan
4. Member at Large:
1. Ayesha Nazeer

Board Meetings
The board will meet every week on Wednesdays, from 4-5PM. They will be held at the Quick Chef cafe.

Board members are required to come to the meetings; however, all members are invited to come and take part of the decision making process.

Please contact us if you might be interested in coming or if you have any thoughts ideas you would like to have submitted during the meetings.

16/4/09 edit: added Ayesha Nazeer

Positions in Sangam India

As discussed, in today's meeting we went over the job descriptions of the new core committee posts and elected members of our groups to fill these positions.

The following is the new organization structure of Sangam India.

The group will be divided into Groundwork and an Administrative wings.

1. Groundwork


1. Groundwork Chairperson
• Manage community work
• Oversee community relations.


2. Departments
1. Event Coordinator
• Plan events
• Maintain calendar
• Coordinate volunteers and other staff
• Work with PR for advertising
• Work with Community Liaison for planning within the community.


2. Infrastructure Coordinator
• Sanitation
• Education
• Adult
• Children
• Living conditions
• Non-camp health care
• Curriculum development (with event coordinator)
• Vocational training


3. Community Liaison
• Organize periodic focus groups with community members
• Assign members to each family and ensure that proper care is being taken
• Convey community and requirements to the rest of the organization.


2. Administrative


1. Administrative Chairperson
• Ensure that financial records are being maintained
• Keep track of legal issues
• Review records
• Keep member records


2. Departments:
1. Financial
• Appoint a committee
• Maintain, manage and allocate funds
• Must keep impeccable records
• Open and manage bank account


2. Legal
• NGO Status
• FCRA
• Land issues


3. Human Relations
• Appoint an internal relations officer and a public relations officer
• Must handle facebook, email, newsletter, blog
• Handle media

The positions will be changed on a regular basis. The positions for the current year will be described in the next post along with contact information and meeting times.

General Members Meeting

Today we kicked off the new year with a General Members meeting. Everyone was invited to come and we did some important work.

We started off the meeting discussing some goals and hopes for the new year.

Some of the ideas that were raised were:

• Expanding our work into the neighboring slums, and collecting information about them via a survey.
• Finding ways to help people that aren't organized into slums, but who are a common sight on streetsides.
• Look into alcohol/drug rehabilitation programs
• Get more involved with vocational training and microfinance.
• Assigning mentors to set numbers of houses to allow for a more personal interaction with the people.
• Doing more in terms of sanitation
• Building awareness inside Sri Ramachandra Univerisity as well as possibly to other colleges in the city. There was especially a need to build awareness among students in other departments of this college.
• Developing a standard of set guidelines which will help us to determine what works and also to create a good model on which to base our work off of.

The most important function of today's meeting was to organize our network into a more cohesive group. This was done to ensure that we move forward more efficiently. The group will be divided into two wings, one of which is administrative and the other which is focused on the ground work in the slum. These were then divided into several posts with various job descriptions. People were voted into these positions. More information will be found in a subsequent post.

Kicking off the New Year

Hi everyone! Happy New Year and Happy Pongal/Sankranthi to all of you. We’re kick-starting this year’s activities with some big ideas and even bigger hopes.

This year is going to see Sangam India being taken to a new level. We are going to start work with vocational training, regular weekly activities for children, frequent meetings and classes with the adults, and continuation of our existing activities.

Tomorrow, Thursday January 24 afternoon, we will be having our first meeting of the year at 4 pm in the central courtyard of the outpatient clinic at SRMC.

Some items that will be on the agenda are:
- Discussing the ongoing Texas-based clothing drive
- Selecting an executive board
- Brainstorming and sharing new ideas and visions for the upcoming year

Please be there and bring your friends. Even if you are not from SRMC, you are more than welcome to email or call us with suggestions that you would like us to discuss or bring up in our meeting.

December Events

My name is Srikanth Chiravuri. I live in Dallas ,Texas. I am a friend of Nivedita Gunturi. My friends and I have started a clothing drive here to clothe the people of Ramavaram. We have been planning this drive since early December. We plan on starting the drive next week. Our goal is to clothe between one hundred and four hundred families. Hopefully we reach this goal so that we can ship the clothes in February.