Pehal- An AID Delhi Initiative

Implementing AID’s Philosophy of SEVA, SANGHARSH & NIRMAAN has been a continuous endeavor of AID Delhi.

To move one step ahead in this direction a new project has been started. This Project is a Micro-financing Project catering specifically to Rickshaw Owners. Project name “SAKSHAM” has been unanimously decided by AID Delhi Volunteers as this name depicts “making someone capable of doing something on its own”.

Project Saksham started with an idea to stop exploitation of Rickshaw Owners as they have to pay rent to the rickshaw lender. This initiative provides them an avenue to buy Rickshaw without paying full cost of the Rickshaw in lumsum. Rickshaw Owner will get the rickshaw from SAKSHAM and start returning money on weekly basis. As soon as he gets a rickshaw he will stop paying any rent to lender and therefore his exploitation stops then and there. He will then pay weekly installments to SAKSHAM so as to give back the money equivalent to cost of a Rickshaw. Based on Calculations, it was found that whole cost of Rickshaw can be easily given back by Rickshaw Owner in 7months.

Rickshaw Owner now owns his own Rickshaw and he does not have to pay any amount to anybody thus he can accumulate that amount as savings.

NOTE:

1. SAKSHAM will not charge any interest from Rickshaw Owner.
2. Though Project works on same philosophy as that of AID, SAKSHAM is not an AID endeavor.

Following are the minutes of the volunteer meet, held on Saturday, the 4th of August, at Sahipur School

People who attended the meet: Aditi, Ashmeet, Vipra, Zulaikha, Megha, Surabhi, Prarthna, Vikramjeet, Prachi, Tushar, Vibhor, Siddharth Kartik, Tasha, and Ashish

1) Orientation: The meet initiated with a orientation session lead by Prachi, who briefed all the volunteers (old and new) about the history of AID, its evolution, the origin of AID Delhi and its current endeavors. Another important aspect was the discussion about how to develop AID delhi as a chapter.

2) AID Delhi's Future: As AID Delhi's recently separated from other chapters (Noida and Gurgaon), the path ahead was discussed in detail.

• Core Team: A core team of AID Delhi has been formed and it consists of 17 volunteers.

The Path Ahead :
• It was unanimously decided that AID Delhi would extend its local and community outreach by collaborating with various ground level, volunteer supporting NGO's by providing them with monetary assistance as well as resources (volunteers), whichever required.
• To initiate the process, volunteers would look around for such NGO's and AID Delhi, after assessing the credibility would collaborate with them.
• This would serve as the first step towards taking AID Delhi to new heights.
Other Interventions
Each volunteer attending the meet was asked about their interests and how they would like to contribute towards building the chapter
• A few volunteers like, Vibhor and Kartik expressed interest in investing their efforts for AID Delhi's fund raising initiatives. They shall initiate the same soon.
Kartik, would be reviving the RTI Cell in AID Delhi.

3) Pehal and Meri Udaan: Pehal and Meri Udaan are projects being run under AID Delhi. The two schools run within the Pehal project were facing some issues that were discussed in the meet

It was unanimously decided to shut down the BT Block school as running the school and implementing our program seemed unsustainable due to non-cooperation of the higher authorities
The syllabus in Sahipur School, would be taught in lines with what the children are taught in school as their exams are nearing, after which the focus would be on strengthening their basics.
• New volunteers joined the community connect team and will be joining Vipra and Vikramjeet every week. This will help us in strengthening our outreach in the Sahipur community

4) ORM: The ORM will be conduted by AID Delhi this month. The theme was discussed in the meet

The ORM would be conducted on the 26th of sept, 2010. The venue is open for discussion.
• An idea of conducted a theatre workshop instead of a formal meet was discussed. Everyone seems okay with the idea.

• The agenda shall be finalised by this week

5) A team has been formed for the school initiatives and it comprises of astha, ashmeet, aditi, tasha, surbhi prarthana and megha

6) A team will be formed to manage the website and blog. Also, we will start releasing a newsletter for AID Delhi soon