*Minutes of Meeting Hyderabad Chapter 04 November 2007* *Attendees:* Ravi Shankar, Prasanthi, Sundar, Chaitanya, Kasyap
*Items Discussed: * 1. Prasanthi updated on the various cases in hand, where we are helping or mediating. a. Karthik case – Srivyal said he will give Rs. 5000/- for him and that would be sufficient for 2 months for Karthik, and for further months Yasodha and Chandra have said they will provide the support based on necessity. b. Kollur Ashram School – Mr. Kiran would be going to this place on 18/11/07, and he Is planning to take some clothes to the students there, we are providing blankets for these kids. Kiran has a concern that he alone can not take the whole lot there, so if any of us can accompany him and take along the lot then it will be very helpful also it will give us an insight into the school. If anyone's place is around that place and are going home for diwali you can take some of the stuff and later join him during the weekend. c. Right now we have paid for most of the cases education ones that we took. Medical we havent taken any case in the recent few months. d. There was a request from MNJ Oncology Center, Red Hills about a case who need support for medicines. They called up to Dr. Sundar as we provided his number as contact point for Lakshmi Narsamma case. Dr. Sundar has asked them to make an estimate on the expenses and then we can think of our support based on that. 2. We have prepared the required documents for opening bank account, one of the document needs sign by all the executive board for this year and those who have attended the meeting have put in there signatures and others will be done in a couple of days. We will be applying for the account this week as we have all the required documents ready. 3. Kasyap attended an international conference on Human Rights and their awareness. In this he has got some very astonishing details for e.g in Hyderabad 2 % of the population is affected by HIV+, he met with many delegates there and one of them has given him poster for AIDS awareness and also some badges on the same. We thought of trying to publicise these where ever possible and bring in awareness in the people around especially by December 1 st as it is World Aids Day. Publicising would be our own offices by putting up the posters at the common areas and making people aware on the same. 4. Dr. Sundar has given some insights from the book "365 ways to make a difference" – by Micheal Norton. There was this interesting article in it, where a center of NIIT tried an experiment. There was a slum surrounding the center, they made hole in the wall so that a monitor can be seen and then provide another one to access mouse, and they observed that the childeren around could start browsing internet and acess sites within a month, and in another month they started creating folders and placing files in that and so on. There was no instructor or anyone they did thing s intuitively and exploring. Withing four months they started using microsoft office. So they started proving more such kiosks for such kids. You can find more details at http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/ 5. The last few meetings have seen very few members turning up and this hinders us to plan anything concrete or long term. If there is any problem due to which you are not attending, please do let us know so that we can try out solving it rather than keeping away from attending. The point is we havent made the steps that we wanted to and thus unable to make the difference to larger base. Only a few members, most of them part of the official body and some others are coming. All of us have to think on this, every one of us here are equally busy with our professional life but we all got together for a purpose so lets put in some efforts in taking this forward and make our society a better place. 6. We decided to take up activities atleast two days in a month, already some members are regularly going to Mehdipatnam School and teaching the kids there. Earlier we thought of going to organisations nearby each of our places and make a report on them, now we have decided to take this up and start making the reports on organisations that we visit. You can do this at places convenient for you, this will help in making some good organisations to get more exposure and helping them to cater better to the inmates. Kasyap's marriage is on 11/11/07 in Khammam. If you are around Khammam on that date do attend the marriage. Thanks and Regards Chaitanya
