This message is not flagged. [ Flag Message - Mark as Unread ] From: nigamanth@softhome.net | This is spam | Add to Address Book To: "Rajendra Marulkar" CC: "Chandrika Venkat Ramanujam" , "Meera - Sridharan" , "Anitha Sampath" , shinjinee_c@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Questions regarding the Gana Chetna project. Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 11:01:54 -0600 Dear AID Austin folks I am still in Gujarat, and so cannot answer all your questions in detail. I will give short answers here, and send you a detailed email once I get back to Chennai. I will also be meeting Prasad (who has been our liaison with GC for the past 4 years) in Pune before I get to Chennai, so will include stuff I discuss with him as well. Answers inline... > l) What projects GanaChetana has completed in the last 10 years for these villages. We would like to get some details about a few projects. That will help us know more about GanaChetana. > I will send you this list after I get back. I have it on my computer in Chennai. > > 3) AID Columbus approved 92,000 Rs. In August 2002. How the funds were utilized? Do we have a progress report ? This stuff is all at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~nsridhar/AID/GC/. Yoiu will have to wade through these documents to find what you want... sorry, I have not had the time to organize them in any intelligle way... but will do it soon. > > 4) We were curious to know who made the project site visit? We would like to get in touch with that person . > Prasad has visited GC a long while back. Pete visited recently and spent a long time with them (3 weeks). I will send you these email addresses soon. > > > 5) Can we get the meeting minutes when this project was approved in AID Columbus? It'll be nice to read about that brainstorming session. > These discussions are in the proj database. > 9) We know the scope of the project was changed a lot from 2002 to 2003. We were curious to know the exact reasons. [We know it was changed after Mr. Peter's inputs] ... We wanted to know the thought process went behind the decision making. > Basically the deal was to change the proposal so that the proposal that cam to AID had more of the human resouce element. In fact, this proposal is majorly just the staff salaries. It is very important to realise that staff salaries is not an admin expense. On the contrary it is the most important program expense. I will write more about this later as well. But this is the basic thiking behind the changing of the scope of the proposal. > > > 10) If the Ashram is not just an office space and has a lot of farming activities going on, won't that be a disadvantage to villages which are further away from the Ashram? > The Ashram will act as a demo farm, where people from nearby villages (and far off ones) can come and check out the work, and take the tech knowhow back to their villages. I will be out of email contact for the next 6 days, and erratic for the next 4 days after that, until I reach Chennai. If possible, you can call me at 9825614292 today (until 7 am IST Sunday 7/27) which is basically all day Saturday for you folks. After that I will go out of cell phone range. I am visiting Michael and Swati in Mozda for the next week, and they are blissfully cut off from the world by not having a phone connection :) . Thanks Nigamanth