Minutes prepared by: Uma Nandhakumar

Date : July 22nd, 2006

Time : 6:15PM

Place : Mountain View Community Center

Compered By: Uma Kailasam

Prayer Song By: Sahana (Daughter of Uma & Jayamani)

Welcome Address by Bala:

Bala welcomed the chief guest and members of TEAM. He expressed his pride in being part of an organization like TEAM and his satisfaction in acheiving a lot of things for schools in India.

View on TEAM by members:

Kumar Kumarappan:

Kumar has been with TEAM for the past 3 years and said that his experience has been personally gratifying and rewarding. He described TEAM as being simple, noble and efficient. Making a difference in India by just contributing a little a month and education being the focus were some of the reasons for his joining TEAM.

Logu Palanisamy:

Logu has been with TEAM since 2001. In the project that he executed last year, Logu got the PTA also involved and got additional contributions and hence 2 schools got benefited instead of just one. He urged TEAM members to look for more contributions to TEAM by checking if the company they work for would match employee contributions or if it has grants. Logu himself used a grant provided by Yahoo for a project on a school to provide for various things like drinking water, UPS, printer, furniture, fence and gates.

Project Execution Experience by Mrs. Vijayakumari Venkatesan:

Mrs.Vijayakumari works in the child development department of the government. From the provisions given by the government, she could only supply the basic necessities of the children. When her son-in-law, Manish – TEAM member, got selected to execute a project, she was able to provide chairs to schools in her division which benefited about 250-300 kids. She expressed how satisfied she felt when she saw the students being happy to have their chairs.

School Selection by Chandra Vellaisamy:

Chandra has been with TEAM since 2004 and he is now the joint secretary for chapter 1.

Total no of members selected in this meet for school project execution: 89

Total money distributed: $44,500 (INR 20 Lakhs)

Children benefited: 22,000 (approx)

Address by Chief Guest:

Senthil Kailasam introduced the chief guest, Mr.Raju Reddy. After working at Intel for about 10 years, Mr.Reddy founded the company named Sierra Atlantic at Fremont for which he is also the CEO. He is a board member at BITS Pilani, where he had done his undergraduate degree. Raju also was responsible for the creation of Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA).

Mr. Raju started his note with a good comment on giving money away: “Giving away money where its put to efficient use is not an easy job”. He expressed his admiration and respect for TEAM. He liked TEAM’s simplicity of ideas, the involvement and sense of ownership that it gives to its members and the fact that TEAM has been addressing problems of schools in rural India. Through his father, who is actively helping under-privileged schools as president of Saraswathy Sishya Mandhir, Raju is also contributing his part to improve schools in India.

Nila (daughter Jagan & Subha) presented the memento to the chief guest.

TEAM News Presentation by Karthikeyan Easwaramoorthy:

Highlights of Presentation:

  • Age of TEAM is 8 years.
  • Member Strength in 2006: 1024.
  • Total projects executed: 792
  • Total money contributed: $396,000.
  • Kids benefited: 1 million.
  • TEAM has 10 chapters of 200-400 members each. An impressive growth for an organization which started with just 10 people.
  • Operating cost is still $0.
  • Introduction to FSA: Other type of charity work like sponsoring a student can be done using FSA where TEAM members can accumulate additional contributions through car donation, gift match and grant donation.
  • Introduction to TEAM Forum: a place to share project experience, log information about schools that need help etc.

Video by Sridhar Minor explained about what to do when you join TEAM and how to execute a project.

Pot Luck:

The potluck had a good variety of rice preparations and an assortment of deserts, snacks and drinks. The highlight was fresh made coffee provided by our member/coordinator Mr. Annamalai Palani. Thanks to him and his team.

Fun Programme:

Compered by: Karunakaran Palanisamy

A lot of good dances, songs sung by sweet voices and skits by cute kids helped cool down the hot day.

Vote of Thanks

Mr. Jaya delivered the vote of thanks and concluded the evening with national anthem

Thanks to everyone for making this TEAM meet to be successful. Again, TEAM proved that Together we can make it happen!

Regards,
Uma Nandhakumar and TEAM News Group