Hi Prasanthi,
Your perspective on not focussing on gala events is understandable. It
is good to know that members are joining TMAD after reading blogs and
hearing from friends/co-workers.
But new members is not the same as more volunteers, right? I am a
member of TMAD but I am *NOT* a volunteer because I am unavailable for any
critical on-field activities.
From this perspective, I suggested that one-time volunteers get a
perspective of what TMAD is, what is the philosophy of the group ... once
they get a perspective of what the group is, they would be willing to extend
their membership status from one-time volunteer to regular volunteer. If
there is no opportunity for someone to get a taste of volunteering, they may
not be open to commit to regular volunteering. Even if they do agree to
regular volunteer, after a few weeks or months, they will stop and wonder,
why am I doing this?
It is a good thing that you bring about the concepts of mission/vision
statements ... add goals/plans (MVGP) also to this. However, I am saying
that, in addition, give people to take a trial of TMAD ... let them interact
with senior members like yourself ... let them ask questions ... then they
will get a lot more clarity and would be more open to long term commitment.
I understand I am not in entire agreement with your proposal. I am
sorry about that. But, I wanted to offer you and the rest of the group an
additional perspective beyond the MVGP statement you proposed.
Please share your thoughts/opinions about this.
Cheers!
Karthik
On 9/26/07, Prasanthi Uppalapati <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> First of all, let me say that ours is also a very very successful group.
> With our kind of approach and attitude, we achieved a lot. I didn't
> understand this till I worked on updating the Web site. When I was adding
> each Chapter and the activities that we took up, I really wonder and felt
> very happy.
>
> Having said that, we have to continue the same spirit and should seriously
> commit to the group. For that we should have a clear Mission Statement and
> Vision. And this should be the compilation of all our members' aspirations.
> I take this opportunity to request all of you, to pen down your thoughts.
>
> 1. Write your idea of social work, what are the activities that you like
> personally and what you want our group to do, what are your expectations on
> the group and how you want to contribute to the group to raise to your
> expectations.
>
> 2. We will list all of them, pull out the majority ones and then
> prioritize. This way everyone's ideas will get a place. Everyone feel
> satisfied that we are all working on our own ideals and not the ones decided
> by someone else.
>
> Coming to organizing gala events, fine, they may serve the purpose to some
> extent. Personally I do not think so that gala event is a crowd puller. IT
> IS....... but for that particular day. We have to get the statistics from
> BHUMI on what is the contribution of the event in terms of volunteers.
>
> My personal view is that there will not be much use if ppl. know our group
> or not. Our main priority should be that we should all be united and be on
> one page. We have enough people even now. If we are all on the same page, it
> is very easy for the new members to fit in. Scalability would be an easy
> task.
>
> 5 to 10 people joined only after reading Prasad gari blog. No effort on
> anyone's part. After reading my article in Poddu, few people joined. Some of
> our members colleagues joining us. We did it without any publicity. I am not
> against publicity. But my personal approach to publicity is something
> different.
>
> I am not undermining any group's effort here. I am only sharing my views.
> The purpose of all groups is same. But approach is different. Luckily
> majority of our members share the same ideology.
>
> I, for one, do not like to involve any political, movie star or a
> bureaucrat in our core committee. Someone (not from our group) gave me this
> suggestion.
>
> As Chaitanya mentioned, we too want to work in a hospital. We do not want
> to limit ourselves to cleaning that to for one day. We want to adopt a
> hospital on a whole and then try to do as much as we can. (Again this is not
> criticize the efforts of BHUMI. They did wonderful research. I have utmost
> respect for their activities and ideology). But we couldn't go. Even with
> the current volunteers also we can do. But for that we need greater
> coordination and time management.
>
> There are many things to share and I am very sure that we will head in a
> clear direction and we can serve the purpose in an optimal way.
>
> I am not getting time to write all the topics, will mail one in each day
> or so.
>
> I take this opportunity to request every Chapter to do the exercise of
> Vision and Mission Statement. If we get a consolidated statement from each
> chapter, we can put forth all the three/four documents and discuss.
>
>
>
>
>
