Meeting Minutes, July 7th 2009

Today's meeting covered:

1. Summary of Saturday's visit
• Met Perulmalswamy
• Found two slums, approximately 350 houses in total.
• Several houses were burned down in the second slum
• People seemed receptive to our help.
2. Discussing the online Twitter presence
3. Pros and cons of adopting the new slums
• Along the river- risk of demolition
• Discussed new plans by Indian Government to be 'slum free' by 2013.
4. Decision made to start in a new place
• Census to be taken by the community
• Survey to be done to cover the following aspects: socioeconomic information, sanitation, education and healthcare.
• Probably to be done on Saturday, July 18th, 2009.
5. Survey plan in the works
6. Activity for this weekend (July 11th, 2009)
   
• Reading with the kids/simple games
• Mapping of the community.
7. General Body Meeting
8. Legal discussion

Meeting Minutes, June 30, 2009

Today's meeting was short and simple. We discussed the following:

1. Finding a new slum to work in.
• Talking to other organizations in the area, and which have experience working with slums
• Going on a trip perhaps over the next week to see nearby areas
• Talking to government/public health officials
  
2. Working in the small community opposite the former Ramavaram slum
• Starting with a meeting in this community to understand their needs and build a relationship
• Focus will be mainly on health education
• Planned a trip for this Saturday, to be run by Nazneen.
3. Discussed details of our new internal organization
• Discussed the plans whereby international teams collaborate via internet mediums, and share their devleopment plans with the Indian-based teams.
• Importance of researching topics and staying alert on the news affecting underprivileged communities in India.
4. Wrote short bios for the board members to be featured on the upcoming website
• May be shared on the blog soon!
  

Meeting Minutes, June 23 2009

Today's meeting covered:

1. A review of Sunday's visit
2. Amudha and Meena's Education
   
   • Apoorvaa and Malar are in charge of this effort.
3. Plans with the Ramavaram Community
   • Health Education Plans, being developed by Dr. Gayatri and Dr. Anita
   • Merit-based scholarships
   • Deworming
   • Periodic health camps
   • Partnering with another NGO
4. Finding a New Slum
   • Developing an action plan
   • Acting as a bridge organization with other NGOs
   • Developing a Calendar
   • Going on a visit sometime this week to prospective areas and developing requirements for such an area.
5. Legal
6. Registration Forms
   • Board members filled out membership forms
   • To be discussed in a future blog post
     

Meeting Reflections - Moving Forward, Thursday, 18th June, 2009

Today's meeting was called in order to discuss the next plan of action regarding Ramavaram as well as Sangam India itself. Several of our members have raised concerns regarding our ability to provide relief and support for these people without becoming a crutch and crippling their independence further. Upon some deliberation, we have decided that immediate food relief is not a necessity, since they do have money to provide for themselves and their families. Since our funds are also limited, it does not make sense for us to give something that can come from another source. More importantly, it is essential that these people understand their responsibilities and do not shirk them. Alcohol consumption and a total disregard for the welfare of their families is becoming more and more rampant among the men, and we need to be careful not to encourage that sort of behavior.

Having said all of that, we also need to focus on what it is that we CAN do for these people at this point - what is our area of expertise and what is that we can provide that they will not get elsewhere? We have decided that the two areas where we will currently focus are a)health care and health education and b) clothing distribution. We will also help them with a gift hamper containing some basics for their homes, but not immediately.

We are planning a visit tomorrow where we will de-worm everyone, since they are living in close quarters with absolutely no sanitary facilities, and we will check all the children for malnutrition. In addition, we will provide some basic health education regarding precautions they need to take while they are in this position. We do need doctors for this, so if you are interested, please let us know.

Food, clothing and shelter are the three basic human needs, and of the three only food has been taken care of. Clothing is not as urgent as originally perceived, but would certainly help them. More information on a clothing distribution this weekend will be provided soon. We have heard a couple of suggestions on providing a tent to protect the people from the elements, but we are not sure yet how that will be undertaken.

Finally, the most important concept that came out of the meeting was the importance of self-reliance and empowerment. If we continue to do all the work for them, the ultimate purpose of Sangam India's existence is lost. It is important that we guide them towards empowering themselves and representing themselves in the face of difficulty. We have identified one man, Mr. Pitchaimani, who can represent his community well. The members of the community accept his leadership. We will be working with him on speaking to government officials as well as on teaching the people to avail themselves of everything that the government offers them.

Organizationally speaking, we have decided that in these matters, we do need to request the assistance of other NGO's in the area who work in these fields and have more experience than us. It is important that we do not bite off more than we can chew, and that we go about achieving our goals in the right way. If you know of any local NGOs that can help us in this, please do let us know.

Lastly, things are starting to settle down regarding Ramavaram. We are planning to keep our disaster management team working on this, and early next week we will start working towards identifying a new slum to work in, based on the extent of their need. Suggestions on where we can look are welcome. To do this, we need to expand our volunteer base, so please help us spread the word, especially within Chennai.

As usual, any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, comments or questions are welcome.

nivedita.gunturi@sangamindia.org, sriram.ramgopal@sangamindia.org, or vasundhra@sangamindia.org.

Notes for Meeting Held on May 9th, 2009

In today's meeting we discussed:

1. Forming bridges with other NGOs in Chennai to help develop and execute our projects. The importance of this was especially seen in regard to vocational training.
2. We discussed various personnel changes, including the addition of Priyanka Boghani as part of a US PR team.
3. The Educational Planning and the Educational Committee.
4. Various aspects of the Legal Committee, still to get NGO status in India and NPO status in the United States.
5. The function of the PR section of Sangam India in regards to getting more people involved ad working with other NGOs.
6. The possibility of health camps in the future.
   

Notes for Meeting Held on April 28th, 2009

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.
  

Notes for Meeting Held On April 21st, 2009

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.
  

Notes for Meeting Held On April 15th, 2009

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.
  Go to event on facebook
  
• 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.
  

Notes for Meeting Held on April 7th, 2009

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

Minutes of Meeting held on 31st March '09

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.

Minutes of Meeting held on 24th March '09

• 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.

Minutes of Meeting held on 17/03/09

• 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.

Minutes of the meeting- 09/03/09

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.
  

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.

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.

New Plans for the Monsoon

The North East monsoon is coming through Chennai, bringing heavy rains to the city. This has an adverse effect on underprivileged populations such as the one in Ramavaram. Because Ramavaram is situated on the river-bed of the (normally trickling) Adyar river, it is more susceptible than other areas to the effects of flooding. The water leads to flooding and spoilage of improperly stored food. In addition, it also has indirect effects with equally profound implications. The working force in the slum depends on the day's income to feed their families. When the rains come, it becomes impossible for them to find work, as many of them find work outdoors, or on the streets. This leads to the disastrous effects of malnutrition for entire communities.

Following today's visit (more on this later) we have decided on taking a step to prevent the food shortages in Ramavaram. We held a small meeting today to consider the present needs of the residents and how to best help them. We determined that the best way to help would be to give out food to each family in the slum. This would go a help to mitigate the acute effects of the rains by giving them some food security. Pamela and Vasundhra have taken on the responsibility for this immense task. Currently we are planning to give 2 kilograms of uncooked rice, as well as half a kilogram of toor dhal (pigeon peas) to each household. This would provide some much needed calories and protein to the families. As we go to each house, we will also seek out any cases of diarrhea and fever. Diarrhea can be treated with oral rehydration solution. Cases of fever, which may be due to malaria, need to be immediately referred to a hospital. The incidences of acute diarrhea and malaria both increase sharply during the rainy seasons.

In addition, we have taken another decision to serve cooked curd rice to the families during the Diwali holidays. This will provide us with another chance to provide the residence with a nutritious meal. As stated previously, we are going to be giving clothes away to the residents as well. This will also help some of the acute problems they are facing.

Though food relief may not be considered as a sustainable solution to the problems we see at Ramavaram, its critical that we help our friends in this time of need! We plan to purchase the supplies tomorrow and deliver it Tuesday, as fast as we possibly can. Please contact us if you would able to volunteer or sponsor these projects. We'll be needing a lot of help!

Photo Credit: The Hindu

Upcoming Plans for 2008

Today we had a small meeting to discuss our upcoming plans for the rest of the year. Many of our members have University exams coming up this December, so as a result, we won't be as active until January.

Our basic plan includes holding a last medical camp, this month. Tentatively scheduled for October 19th, we plan on addressing men's health as well as general medical complaints for all other groups as well.

Diwali, the Indian celebration of lights, is coming on October 27th. This is traditionally celebrated by the giving of clothes to family and friends. Over the last 3 months, we have collected a large volume of clothing. We are going to be dividing this up to give something to each of the residents of Ramavaram.

In addition to this, we are going to send group to Ramavaram to spend some time with the children. This will promote the friendships that we have made with them. We have plans to make 'lesson plans' of sorts to teach the children valuable lessons in hygiene and sanitation as well, which we will work into these trips.

Because of the upcoming exams, we are short on volunteers for these events. If you are in Chennai and if you would like to participate in any of these events, please let us know! We need all the help we can get. Please contact us by telephone +91 9789901650 or by email at info@sangamindia.org if you are interested.

Upcoming Plans for Sangam India

We had a great lunch meeting yesterday and we have a lot of plans for the upcoming month!

1. At the top of the list is following up on the cases from Sunday's medical camp. There were numerous cases of dental caries and these children need to be referred to the hospital for low-cost dental care. If necessary, we have to be willing to pay for these children to recieve adequate treatment.
2. Our next event is going to be an audiovisual screening camp for people of all ages. We are planning on doing this on August 3rd and we need to get the ENT and Audiology departments on board for this.
3. For Independence Day, August 15th we hope to give clothes to each of the slum residents. This involves the collecting and organizing of the numerous donations we have, as well as collecting as many more as we can.
4. We are planning on running a gynecology and cervical screening camp next month as well. The date is still TBD.
5. In terms of PR, we are going to put some information about our project in the Caduceus magazine as well as possibly having a stand in the SRMC "Culturals" event.