Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:42:16 +0530 (IST) From: "Prasad Subramanian" | This is spam | Add to Address Book To: "Rajendra Marulkar" CC: "Shinjinee Chattopadhyay" , "Anitha Sampath" , "Nigamanth Sridhar" , "Dhanada Mishra" , dkmishra@satyam.net.in, "Peter Bakos" , "Peter Bakos" Subject: Re: Regarding GanaChetana Hi Rajendra, Thank you for your e-mail. I have been mostly handling the (e)paperwork regarding Gana Chetana, and have met and talked with Mohan Mahanta at length, but I have never visited the project per se. I plan to do so sometime in Feb 2004. AID volunteer Peter Bakos has visited Gana Chetana, and I'm cc:ing this e-mail to him. I'm also cc:ing this e-mail to Dhanada Mishra, AID volunteer in Bhubaneswar, who is in immediate touch with Mohan Mahanta. I can only answer your questions in general at this point. Perhaps Peter can give you more specific answers. The Gana Chetana project has been with AID for several years now, but it has not been systematically looked into and followed up for one reason or the other. It is only recently that AID Columbus has taken it up and funded it partially. It has been well recommended by Peter Bakos, who undertook a detailed visit to the project last summer. All else apart, I felt that Mohan bhai was quite committed to building up a small network of income generation programs that will help the people of the villages sustain themselves better. I felt that his committment to the idea of income generation and sustainability was beyond that of any other project I have seen, especially in Orissa. Dhanada and other AID volunteers in Orissa have recently started an Eco shop in Bhubaneswar as part of this overall plan. This shop will help market and distribute products from groups like Gana Chetana. I recall discussing this idea with Mohan Bhai when he visited me here in Pune a few months ago, and its already taking root. Mohanbhai visited some similar outlets in Pune, and he has doubtless garnered ideas from them, apart from reinforcing some of his own. I won't say much more about specifics. Peter and Dhanada are much better equipped to do this. I'd just like to stress that I feel that this is a good project with plenty of potential, which serves a highly underprivileged part of Orissa. I think that it deserves to be funded for one whole (uninterrupted) year before we sit back and examine their performance and suggest remedial measures. Best regards, - Prasad. Prasad Subramanian IUCAA, P.O Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune - 411 007, India Phone: (020) 569 1414, ext. 304; FAX: (020) 569 0760 e-mail: psubrama@iucaa.ernet.in http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/~psubrama On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Rajendra Marulkar wrote: > Hi Prasad, > We are volenteers from AID-Austin and we are looking into the GanaChetana project. We know, you know a lot about GanaChetana and we were curious to know a few things. > > 1) What is your past experience with GanaChetana? What kind of interaction you had with them ? > 2) Do you have the details of the projects done by GanaChetana so far? > 3) Do you have the detail plan for "income generation scheme" through demonstration farm proposed by GanaChetana? > 4) Do you have any parameters in mind, by which we can measure the status & success of this project in different phases? The intention of this question is really to see whether we need to take any corrective action in the middle of the project to make the project successful. > > Thanks for your feedback. > > Regards > Rajendra > > > > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. -- Prasad Subramanian IUCAA, P.O Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune - 411 007, India Phone: (020) 569 1414, ext. 304; FAX: (020) 569 0760 e-mail: psubrama@iucaa.ernet.in http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/~psubrama