Yesterday’s Meeting
Hi everyone,
This is just a little update for those who couldn’t make it to the meeting yesterday. We discussed our project ideas a little further, but, obviously, came to no conclusions.
The Ashraya proposal is still on the table. We’re thinking if we pursue it, we will probably take an adult literacy/education program approach or a YDI-style approach, either targeting youth or adults within the slum, or both in the slum and in the city of Pune. See the Google Doc on our conversation with Daniel (our contact with Ashraya) for more details. If attempt to integrate city-dwellers into our program, we anticipate caste-conflict issues. This is something we thought we might look at more closely this week.
We talked a bit about the Northern Uganda Microfinance Initiative, and John said he will be learning more about safety hazards and possible looking for a new location this week.
Tim introduced a few new ideas, and plans to make them a little more concrete by the end of this week. They involve immigration issues and may incorporate a domestic research component and abroad implementation.
We spoke about grants and thought we should get the ball rolling on that since there are some grants available that don’t require us to have nailed down a project. I plan to contact the Grants and Fellowships office before I leave and get some helpful materials.
Finally, we had some thoughts on activism. The following questions were brought up:
- Does WDA want to provide basic needs (like food, water, shelter), or are we open to secondary needs like literacy?
- Is literacy/education a secondary need?
- What systemic factors contibute to an environment in which basic needs (like food, water, shelter) are not being met?
- Is meaningful activism about attacking the largest problems, or is it about using your resources in the most appropriate way possible?
At the end of the meeting we though each member should think about these questions, think about, based on his/her idea of meaningful activism, which project is most enticing. We hoped we could regroup this Friday for further discussion and perhaps some more direction for the summer.
Hope you’re all enjoying the last day of finals!
Melissa
Tags: Updates