A.I.D. Conference 2002

Minutes

Day 1 – Morning session

Agenda of the morning session:

1	“Connecting the dots” - Ravi Kuchimanchi	Page 2
2	Post-approval interaction and Project quality - Ravishankar Arunachalam	Page 4
3	Village visits – Kiran Vissa	Page 6
4	AID India Interaction – Ravi Kuchimuchi	Page 10
5	Introduction to Legal and Treasury Workshop	Page 12
6	Fundraising and Publicity	Page 13
7	Web-site	Page 16

Session 1 “Connecting the dots” - Ravi Kuchimanchi

- Remember that the ‘guy out there’ might be a woman. The idea that women’s issues are solved once we are in the US and we are educated is not correct.

- Anyway, thanks to Bay area chapter for the arrangements they have made and to all of you for the trouble you have taken for coming here.

- I would like to start with 2 minutes of silence.

- At the end of the 2 minute silence – ‘how many minutes was that?’ How many of us were really silent? If 150 of us were really silent for 2 minutes that’s 300 minutes, or 5 hours of silence! 2 minutes is about the time it takes to sign a petition. Most of you have the background on issues like Narmada, many have spent hours studying and preparing the petition. 2 minutes is about the time it takes to send a project check to India once the request is received. 2 minutes is the time it takes to request a check once it is reviewed. 2 minutes is the time it takes to say ‘I will neither give nor receive dowry’. But the effect of each of your 2 minutes adds up, “snowballs” as we have just seen.

- AID volunteers have done a v. good job of becoming aware of so many things. The idea of AID we started with – Interconnected problems have interconnected solutions, meant that we have to get an idea of many issues, and we need to look for complexity in the solution also. We are now at a stage where this group is an extremely aware and committed one. We are in some sense role models for your colleagues here as well as those back home. So respect other people’s time. If someone among you prepares a statement against dowry, respect the time they have spent and give the 2 minutes you need to sign it. 2 minutes is how long it took for Rajeev Natarajan to say why not use sweat-shop free T-shirts for our dowry-free campaign? Now when our campaign is launched we are standing on the shoulders of the sweatshop-free campaign, which many in US have taken trouble to launch. So now let us all say “From sweat shop free to dowry free, the struggle is one, the struggle is one”

- Constructive activities à Accountability struggles à Responsible citizens

sangarsh(struggle) and nirman(constructive activities) are two sides of the same coin)

- (Personal Development).

- Constructive activities are like planting trees or reforestation. Now if you are CHIPKO, planting trees is also accompanied by (struggles) to prevent trees from being cut down. The person planting trees also knows (Personal development.) that forests are not just a group of trees. They are ecosystems. If we have a piece of paper here, on which we file project reviews, we should know that it comes from a forest. Using both sides of a paper is also part of the process.

- In 1994 the Lodhar school did not exist. Children in communities around IIT Kanpur were being taught by the faculty of IIT. We suggested they expand to villages around Kanpur. We built this school room by room and we now have up to 8^th grade. Now of course there are other groups supporting this project as well. This is an example of a ‘linear’ project.

- Another example to show interconnectedness. The mobile science lab in Maharashtra spends about 2 days in each school. AID supported a small part of the lab. More importantly science teacher Ashok became a good friend of AID. He is probably the only person from his village who is educated enough to be a science teacher. The friendship we developed was very strong. He suggested one day that we visit Surodi, his village. Shobha from Pittsburgh and Aravinda went to Surodi and we asked the children to sing. They sang ‘Johnny Johnny yes papa, eating sugar…’ instead of a marathi or even hindi song! While they sang well, we were shocked by this! Maharashtra now has a policy of teaching English in all villages.

- Ashok’s village is near Anna Hazare’s in Ralegaon Siddhi. He was interested in our support for watershed development work in Surodi. We are the only group supporting this work. Now as in the case of Lodhar, there might be other groups supporting them in future.

- Next step of complexity. In villages in the (Narmada) valley, we saw children studying at 9 PM in candlelight. We did a simple calculation to see how much power it would take to provide them light. A few children pedaling for a few minutes for fun would provide enough light for them to study at night. We entered the alternative energy field through pedal power because alternative energy is expensive. We put a pedal generator in village schools in Narmada valley and that drew the attention of activists all over India.

- From lighting a school to lighting a village is a long step. Bilgaon is a 15 hamlet tribal village in the valley. Children in Bilgaon school have to eat dinner before sunset because they have no electricity. Bilgaon has sources of water and running water over drops. You can generate electricity easily. Village elec. Committee planned a 15KW lighting project. In the Narmada valley where there is sangharsh we are now doing Nirmaan.

- Aravinda and I work with a young couple Suryanarayana and Lakshmi in Srikakulam Dt. Children run their own libraries, with a monitor in rotation who writes down a register for each child in the library. With about Rs. 2000 you can start such a library. AID receives internship requests and we place about 12 interns a year. We almost place someone every month. Jeremy and Laura helped out in our Srikakulam villages. Suryanarayana also does organic farming. In a village about 2.5 hours from here, there is a reservoir being built, which will be submerging houses. People from Maduvalasa know we work with NBA etc. and they called us for help. After displacement, the rehab. Sites were not provided even for the first village and so people have shacked up in temporary homes. So this shows where we were initially working in Srikakulam on health, libraries and farming, 2 hours away we were called upon to work on sangharsh. The first group of villages (in Srikakulam) are supposed to be beneficiaries of the reservoir! The people there thought that rehab. had been complete in maduvalasa! We took some of the village people from the first group to the unrehabilitated villages in maduvalasa. Now the view is very different in the first mandala. The people feel they can wait for complete rehab. of the reservoir affected as they have already waited long enough for water. Now these two movements have also linked up with the Dalit movement in which Ajay is involved.

- Ravi Announced that TNSF’s Arogya Iyakkam health program has been recognized as one of the ten best programmes in the World by UNICEF.

Ravi went through the progress by AID briefly.

$x raised, 100 projects supported, 8000 postcards sent to Vajpayee, 10 calls made to higher ups, 5 meetings with government at high levels, 20 village visits, 300 sweatshop free t-shirts, 10 skits performed……3 of us working full time in India.

Session 3 – Village visits – Kiran Vissa

Since we are talking about interacting with NGOs and relating to them as part of our family, I wanted to discuss visiting projects and villages.

I wanted us to think of project visits and in a broader way, just visiting villages – not necessarily as part of a project. That was one of the most exciting things for me the first time I visited India after joining AID. We might not have previously thought of work taking place in villages or even in urban settings. After getting involved in AID we know about the literacy movement, women’s savings, Narmada….We see the picture of India in a totally different way. The first time I visited villages changed my perspective completely. In MD, before anyone visits villages for the first time, we all used to have a lot of suggestions of things to do and products to collect in the villages.

Kiran, asked the audience to share their experience with their first site visit:

Shailabh: I had the reverse experience. I joined AID after visiting a project. I visited a State College project, which was near my home in India. After seeing the impact it had, I joined AID. (applause)

Ravi: I had gone for a Physics conference near Bhubaneshwar. I took a day off to visit villages nearby and took a couple of friends along! The second experience was one of a ‘trail’. Rather than just focus on a small area, Prem from Pittsburgh visited projects in south India, middle India and in Assam!

VOL: Whenever caste issues came up (previously) it was in the context of reservations. I saw for the first time where the ‘sweeper’ in a village stayed.

Malini: My first visit was with Balaji to Nemeli. I always thought villagers were not very enthusiastic. I saw the village volunteers maintain the records/registers. In fact there were women volunteering even though their husbands didn’t want them to – keeping it secret from the husbands. In the second village, we saw a Balawadi school, in a hut divided into two rooms. We didn’t even understand their games, which gave them a kick, that the big people from the city didn’t understand their games! Parents (in this case all fathers) had a meeting and they were discussing why children didn’t attend the school. Kids need to walk all the way and there were concerns about what kids are doing in the school. There were so many ideas coming from the parents about running the school. They came up with the idea of street plays by the kids to show the parents what they are learning. The fathers thought of collecting a fee to get more commitment from the parents....

KIRAN: Obviously she is still very excited about a visit she made in 1998!

Om Damani: Seema and I visited Narmada valley, Bombay and some other projects. We were initially skeptical about the village volunteers, mentioned in the HBP proposal., but after staying with the village volunteers and seeing the fire in their eyes, we saw things with a different perspective.

Shrinaath: One thing I wanted to bring out was what happens after a visit. My first visit was to Palghat. When I started talking to a women’s savings group, they showed me their passbook. Having an identity and a passbook gave them so much. It was my responsibility to give equal importance to their passbook. We put the picture of their passbook in Dishaa, and this was publicized even in a local newspaper there. The kind of motivation these things give to the people there is so much.

VOL: I have to say visiting a project is one of the most humbling experiences. The first time I went, I thought everything they did was so perfect. The phrases we use, ‘microcredit’ etc. did not come to life until I saw 12 women come together in reality.

VOL: They had so much of expectation from us. We need to be much more prepared for the visit.

VOL: I think it is a very humbling experience. There is no electricity; they go through so much hardship. Everything we send makes so much difference to them

Mrudula: The people in villages ask us about our family. How they open up to us is unbelievable and they treat us so well, it is overwhelming.

KIRAN: What has come out from all the excitement people feel about their project visits, is we should not look at project visits as a ‘requirement before approval’. Not just a box we can check off before sending money. One disturbing thing was the project visit in some cases is almost an after-thought, that we can finally approve a project after the formality of a project visit. Sometimes the project is visited not by a volunteer from the chapter reviewing but from someone from another chapter who happens to be visiting India. There is often not a lot of interaction between the chapter reviewing and the NGO people. The project visit does not always enhance the understanding of the chapter but is treated more like an administrative requirement.

I also want to find out what kind of preparation goes on before making the visit. Did people feel they were well prepared for their visits?
VOL: I think the chapter can help a lot in telling the people what to look for in a project visit.

Murali: My visit was to Nemeli to see the health program. I got to see the registers they maintained and I accompanied the activists going door-to-door, to ask what they fed their children, etc. Having gone through that process helped me understand HBP a lot. One of the things we constantly say about AID is we are different from other funding agencies because we are very ‘close to our projects’, human element etc. We should show this by our actions.

- Kiran: Whom do we interact with when we go to a village? Do we just meet the coordinator with whom we correspond, or do we interact with the people in the village as well, independent of what the NGO says?

- VOL: Its much easier if you have a woman volunteer as the women open up better.

- VOL: Right after the earthquake we went to a village where UNICEF was funding books. I went with some volunteers from GANATAR and we talked to the people. They were very open and we went to meet the teacher.

- Kiran: At one NGO in Andhra we had supported some organic farming and vermi-composting. The project they proposed was upgrading the vermi-composting tank. They wanted to upgrade the thatched roof of the structure. Basically, vermi-composting uses a tank, theirs was 6 ft x 18 ft; they would put dried leaves and grass, and earthworms eat that material. They generate manure that can be used in the farms. Farmers can generate their own manure instead of buying from outside. When we talked to the villagers, the NGO people were also there. In one case the people were happier to buy Rs. 10 worth of Vermicompost manure than make their own. In another case, the villagers were very proud that they were not dependent on the NGO and rather they could make their own. First step they used a tank with thatched roof shed. After that they eliminated even that and started using their own backyards for tree-shade. 300 families had their own vermi-composting – so rather than upgrade the tank, they had ‘downgraded’ so they could sustain their own tanks.

- Rash: Often there is a project coordinator who takes you around. Even though it is genuine, things are pre-planned, and you have little scope for interaction with the villagers.

- VOL: It’s important how we interact with the NGO. In a couple of projects, whoever was free would take you to the field. I found it was not preplanned or pre-assigned.

Rajeev Natarajan: Have a women volunteer with you.

- Mohan Bhagat: Projects, however complex, are only a narrow part of their lives. When you want to feel that you belong, let them talk about their lives, about other parameters of their lives. I have lived outside India for 45 years. When we started visiting villages and talking to young people, we learned so much about their lives. We talked about how their lives were being ‘terminated’ in some sense by so many forces outside of what we are doing for them. These girls work for Rs.500 a month for 14, 15 hours a day. Incredibly I had to ask 4 years from now, 5 years from now, what are we doing for them? If we call ourselves associates of India’s development our involvement should go much beyond the project.

- KIRAN: We talked about post-approval interaction. We talked about project visits and village visits. Interacting with the people doing the work and the people in the villages is one of the most joyous and educational aspects of working with AID. Exchanging notes with the people doing organic farming and everything they are doing is the most interesting thing, which builds up energy for me to do my treasury work and everything else I need to do.

- Aravinda: I can remember one project visit I made for herbal medicine in the hills of A.P. We made friends with the children, put up a Dussera play, etc. And next time we put up a new play….that could have actually become the project!

- VOL: I went with Ravi to a watershed development project in Maharashtra. The sarpanch said they had rainfall for 6 months and needed watershed development. But talking to the villagers revealed the problems they had with the sarpanch since he is a big landowner, and they had so many other issues other than watershed development.

- KIRAN: I wanted to hear couple of ideas about how you think we can share this excitement even when we are not together in the conference.

- VOL: I hope the perspective should be what difference can we make, rather than what have we have already achieved.

- Shrinaath: I think we could try out at a concert or fundraiser, instead of the usual presentation, have someone talk for 10 minutes about their project visit.

- VOL: First hand accounts are very powerful

- Om; Project visit reports are not sent out to everyone. Only the chapter sees it. All of AID and donors should see them too.

- VOL: Presentations with pictures to all the volunteers are very good.

- Hrishi: There will be a team under Rash working on project visits and a framework.

- KIRAN: What I want us to take back from this session is project visits are exciting!! Being prepared is important to make them more fulfilling. Personal interaction with the villagers forms the key part of the post-approval. We need much more SHARING of the project visits of volunteers. Any of you who feels that they have not picked up a motivating activity should take up the task of (coming up with) how to do more sharing.

Session 4: AID India Interaction – Ravi Kuchimanchi

I just want to make a couple of comments on village visits. One of the important things is timeliness. Aravinda and I get requests just before you board the flight. We can help coordinate visits, but I need to send addresses, bus routes, local contacts. It would help if all this is done early as well, as what to look for in the visit.

- Typically a lot of NGOs working on projects can juggle with money they have even if we are late.

- Projects often are driven by external factors like “UN year of tree”! For innovative projects, often times there is a lot we are doing in India to make the project happen. Because the project is not very simple, (Like micro-hydel project in Bilgaon) we need timeliness for these things

- We have to be one group – AID and AID India. The distinction is artificial. Aravinda, Balaji and I wonder if you all appreciate the meaning of what we are doing; the way we feel.

- Hrishi: There was a proposal to increase university chapters in India. That would help interaction.

- Kameshwar, NotreDame: What we think is there is a lot of things AID_India can do to increase involvement of talented people in India. For example retired people from different professions. For example I saw an article about wasteland regeneration and a retired scientist used his expertise and they got Rs.1.5 Crore from NABARD. Retired class could make a lot of difference. There are many new ideas from them.

- Ravi: what do you feel about the learnings from projects that Aravinda, Balaji and I are doing?

- VOL: I think visual feedbacks would help a lot.

- Rash: I think the interaction on projects from jeevan saathis is generally better.

- Kiran: The more our involvement, the better our understanding. For example with ecoshop, I understood a lot about the products, the demand they have in cities and why people don’t purchase what they want. The jute bags that we make at Srikakulam, we made calculations on the price of the bags. When I see a jute-bag in the market, I see that of the price of Rs. 75, the woman making it might get Rs. 20. This kind of understanding we can get through interaction with AID-India.

- Shrinaath: No matter which chapter funds the project, all others need to discuss and understand AID-India projects.

- Rajesh: Chapters should think about which projects they choose and give precedence to projects from fellows and Saathis.

- VOL: If we could get a few more details about the projects from AID-India before we choose projects…

- Shailabh: I really appreciate the mails that you and Balaji send.

- Srisundar: Sometimes info is sent in bits and pieces. If put together, perhaps we could form a group to consolidate info that you send. Some form of regular communication with Saathis, personal visits might be useful.

- Sharath: I heard a couple of people talk about increase number of chapters/people in India. Your comments?

- Ravi K: We’ll talk about that later as it is not project-related. In India we feel there is a lot of effective correspondence from you. If we want to increase the correspondence, we could do things. We often find we keep repeating things if we interact too much. One of the goals we have set for ourselves is non-funding directions – like writing and production of books, translation etc. If we are linking a lot on non-funding directions, the timeliness and maturity of those interactions are very important.

Session 5: Introduction to Legal and Treasury Issues

Legal Issues ( Prosenjit)

Why talk of compliance?

-Non-compliance is not an option.

-Organization is growing in size.

- Need to maintain our 501 (C) 3 exempt status.

- UBIT(Unrelated Business Income Tax) : Potential hazards of Unrelated business

- Need to know the tax implications between Sponsorships versus advertisements.

- Disclosure requirements

- Maintaining compliance requires participation from everybody

- Increase legal awareness amongst volunteers

- Consult legal help wherever necessary.

Treasury (Ajit)

- Treasury procedures document will be discussed

- Financial status 2001: 880,221 / 318,300 (donations/disbursements)

- Where is the financial annual report for 2001? It will be on website.

Agenda for the workshop:

A day in the life of a donation

Quick tour of treasury procedures

Treasury concerns/problems

Overview: web based system

Sneak Preview: new web based system

Session 6 : Fund Raising and Publicity - an introspection (Malini and Hrishi)

Purpose of raising funds and getting more volunteers

- Fund-raising should not become the main aim of a chapter! We need more people involved – increases awareness.

- Concerts are the main fund-raising avenue, second being telethons, matching grants is third.

- Programs adopted by top chapters.

- College park – one on one approach – Credit Card donations, tables, telethon, t-shirts, concerts…

- Bay area – Concerts, Credit Card donations, tables

- Austin – Direct targeting, penny drive, cricket match

- Boston – Matching donations, direct targeting, telethon, CC drive

- Ann arbor – Concert, scrips, art fairs

- Cincinnati - Local talent shows, concerts, CC drive

Awareness

- Boston – talk, telethon, website – 300 newsletter subscribers

- College park – tables, telethon, direct approach, concerts, India beckons – 1900 newsletter subscribers

- Columbus – community events – 150 newsletter subscribers

- Bay area – talks, video screenings – 500 newsletter subscribers

- Austin – Talks, AID presentation, tales, movies – 160 newsletter subscribers

- Cincinnati – talent shows, concerts – 850 newsletter subscribers

- State college – newsletter, food festival – 100 newsletter subscribers

Telethon: calling up old or potential donors – year-end updates, asking for donations etc.

India Beckons is a cultural event where (1) we promote local talent, (2) items on issues related to India like communal harmony. We don’t spend anything on it but it is used for awareness and fund-raising.

Volunteers

Boston, College park and Austin – high volunteer base.

Interesting activities at CSH in Austin – whenever a new vol. Comes to the meeting, the volunteer is given an intro to all the activities – a volunteer package, essentially has all the website info., local contacts for more info.

Boston – volunteer sign-ups on website. 75 people signed up over the period of a year. We contacted them individually by phone to invite them to the CSH. Of them a small number actually come and stay.

Media appearances – increase number of appearances on avenues available.

Most focus has been on concerts, movie screenings, food-stalls, less on one-on-one approach.

One-one approach – main focus at Maryland – top fundraiser. College Park’s top fund-raising year was also when they focused on telethons.

Donor utilizations: repeat donations at MD – 53%

Columbus – 33%

Boston – 7%

Bay area – 7%

Volunteers who are donors -- College park – 80%, Bay area – 100%

Donors who get referral, who visit projects – very small number.

HRISHI -

We need to get AID noticed. We have good volunteers, good NGOs who are working very hard. What’s wrong with standing up on the table and saying so?

- How are we synergizing our efforts across all chapters and volunteers?

- Can we come up with a standard processes for fund-raising so that we have higher returns in future.

PROBLEMS

- Treasury – receipts/database/ chapters’ access to their own database.

- Lack of donor interaction

- Lack of publicity / awareness campaigns – being in the media involves money. Our overheads will probably go up if we spend more on publicity. But it will increase awareness and fund-raising.

- Lack of resources – even if there are volunteers, resources are not available for events, concerts etc.

- No incentive scheme – can we give out products from AID-India to donors? Calendars/ T-shirts etc?

- Idealistic approaches about where we get our funds! It’s important to know who our donors are – if they are large corporations they could start dictating. But if there is say, an Oriya community we should approach them for projects in Orissa. This would be a restricted donation…we could look a those issues

- Disconnect from other parts of AID – our proposition is to raise funds for NGOs and projects. We are “selling projects” in some sense, making people aware of projects for which they are donating.

- Shrinaath: We should not use words like ‘selling’ projects.

- Hrishi: we should have a clear idea about projects that our donor is going to support.

- We should do target-based fund-raising.

- Malini: We will have problems with target-based fund-raising.

SOLUTIONS

- Form AID-wide group to look into different aspects of fund-raising

- Consolidate inputs from various chapters

- Form 5/6 subgroups based on max. interest among chapters.

- Team effort relieves burden from individuals – instead of single-pointed email for dealing with things on behalf of chapter.

TILL NOW

- Team formed – ongoing

GENERAL GUIDELINES

- Make fundraisers – maximum ROI

- Make fundraisers tie closely with projects

- Make donors central to Fund-raising

- Increase publicity! Maintain good email database for your chapter

- Improve website support

- Improve coordination with AID India team. Not just Ravi, Aravinda Balaji, but also block-level coords, chapters in IITs etc who can tell us more about what is going on in field

- Aravind: How do you quantify ROI for something like awareness?

- Hrishi: I don’t know. We can try to figure out something in the workshop.

- Vol: We just had a concert at which we barely broke even. But the concert generated about 7 new volunteers!

FIVE SUBGROUPS

- Individual donors

- Events, big and small – reaching out to second gen.

- Fund-raising drives

Session 7 : Websites

Ten minutes about aidindia.org – Nagaraja Prakasam

Websites

300 static pages

500 mb disk space

170 Perl Scripts

Hosting 21 E-mail lists

4 years of AID news

Online donation was introduced in Jan 2001, 120 k through online. Average unique visits went up from 65 to 95 a day.

Gujarat, EcoShop sections were added.

TODO:

- Make the site as dynamic as possible.

- Revamp the site and automate “Project Database”, Events, Gallery sections

- Upgrade the web server.

- Revamp and keep Gujurat, EcoShop, NODowry, 100 Block Plan web sites up-to-date.

- Improve communication among chapter web coordinators.

- Created an aid_web_redesign list with 44 volunteers. Have to make this pool as a resource pool to address any web issues/needs.

- Make sure each chapter has a web presence.

- Standardize chapter template, talk about it more.

- There is a staging area and a trial area where the initial editing happens.

- Feeder sites to AID website

Technical: JSP, PERL, DHTML, Databases

Editors: Good writing skills

CONTACTS:

info@aidindia.org

webmaster@aidindia.org

web@aidindia.org