Minutes of the Thirteenth RBT get-together - on MAY 4th at SIN, Breach Candy.
Next Meeting : JUNE 8th 2003 at CafT Basilico at Colaba

Hello everyone,

These are the minutes of the Thirteenth get-together of the organization.!

AGENDA
-Organisational Update - Articles on RBT, SMS Reminders from Cellent,Attendance Requirement, Coordinating Team
-Team Updates
-New Projects Proposals - Adopt-a-child & Magic Bus
-Miscellaneous


1) ORGANISATIONAL UPDATE

Lots of articles on Revive Bombay. Bombay Times, Business India(on AID Event)

-Increase in members wanting to join, including disabled people.
-AGNI invited RBT to speak to them at their AGM. Found our concept very interesting.
-Gerson da Cunha wrote about RBT and AID in his column in the Bombay Times.
-Manish Maker was on radio talking about AID and how to make the city more disabled friendly.
-We mailed the minutes and reminder late and apologise for that.
-SMS Update. Cellent.com an sms marketing firm has brought us this service for free as their way of giving back to the city. Now we can send SMS to members of RBT as reminders for our events in the future
-We now have our meetings once a month, on the first Sunday of the month. There is a roster going around, so please sign it as we we now have a membership attendance requirement. We are not charging any membership fees but the requirement is that you comes for atleast 30% of the meetings in a year to show some degree of commitment to the organisation, for what it is doing.
-We have now formed a Coordinating Team. The three members of it are :
i) Chaitanya Pande (Chaitanya_Pande@pruicici.com)
ii) Hemanth Meka Rao (hemanth@hemanth.net)
ii) Karan Ahluwalia (karan.ahluwalia@rabobank.com)

The coordinating team will be convening and running the meetings. They will also be interfacing with each of the teams and each member is responsible for a team/teams, and to see how they can help the team leader.

2) TEAM UPDATES
(To get involved with any of these projects, kindly contact the team
leaders on their email address mentioned below)

Pet-a-tree
Heritage Statues
Bollywood Walk of Fame
NGO AGM
Make-a-wish
Accessibility for Individual with Disabilities (A.I.D)
CafT Revive
Future of Roads (F.O.R)
Adopt-a-Child


1) Pet-a-tree:
Team leader : Rishi Tejuja - rishitejuja@utisel.com

We have gotten written permission from the Municipal Corporation to plant trees on Mahim Causeway. Thanks to Praniti and Saumitra for putting in their efforts on this. We are in the process of procurring 10-15 ft Bottle Palm trees to plant. We want to avoid saplings as they can get easily damaged here or pilfered. We have also contacted the BMC for giving us the traffic island at the Portugese Church. This area is now under the jurisdiction of the Traffic Department, so we will be getting feedback from them now. We are also talking to landscapers for landscaping these islands. We might also approach hoarding companies to make sure that trees we plant will be safe under their hoardings.


2) Heritage Statues:
Team leader : Hemanth Meka Rao - hemanth@hemanth.net

The Senior Heritage Engineer has submitted the report to the Municipal Commissioner on the heritage statues in question. We will be following up with him.


3) Bollywood Walk of Fame:
Team leader : Hemanth Meka Rao - hemanth@hemanth.net

We are still working on getting the land allocated to us. Finally met Sameer Bhujbal and spoke to him about the BWOF. He is going to get back to us. We have also made a comprehensive list of stars and legends, which we will further scrutinize. 


4) NGO AGM:
Team leader : Hemanth Meka Rao - hemanth@hemanth.net

-For the NGO AGM, we are trying to concentrate on developmental issues, primarily those affecting the city. The big issues we are looking at having are Environmental Issues, Urban Development & Sustainability, Women & Children as a start. We would like to bring experts in these areas to come and address the AGM, and thereby bring their expertise to the table.

-We have also compiled a list of 300 NGO's and are calling each and every NGO to get them interested, and getting a more comprehensive database for the future. We have gotten a favourable response from the State Government in being a partner on this. We are also looking at getting the United Nations through the UNDP to get involved, along with the World Bank.


5) Make-a-wish:
Team leader : Mihir Bhansali - mihir@pobox.com & Shuva Mandal - shuvamandal@yahoo.com

-The team is trying to reorganise itself. The team is now being headed up by Mihir Bhansali and Shuva Mandal. Their intent is still to work with underpriviledged children or terminally ill-children, and they are looking into working or merging with the Adopt-a-child team. 


6) Accessibility for Individuals with Disabilities (A.I.D): Team leader : Manish Maker - manish.maker@makers.co.in

-We had a seminar on the 19th of April, which was 'Accessibility & You - Creating a Barrier free Environment', and that was a pretty big event. Our direction as a team now stems from what happened at the seminar, the responses from it etc. We targetted the lack of infrastructure in the city for accessibility and we had co-hosted the event with NCPEDP (National Center for Promotion of Employment of Disabled People) from Delhi, which is Javed Abidi's organisation.

-After discussing the Mumbai experience and the Delhi experience, we had an open house, where we had a discussion forum. It was attended by legal experts, builders, architects, disability organisations and schools etc. Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde was the Chief Guest, and Pramod Navalkar was the Guest of Honour. We also had the Principal Secretary for Social Rehabilitation Mr. Suresh Kumar, the Chief Fire Officer, corporator Puran Doshi, city crusader Gerson da Cunha to mention a few. In all, 70 people attended the event.

-The Chief Minister was very open to spend time understanding the issue. He has agreed to pushing the amendment of the DC Regulations, and in general, showing his support to this cause of Accesibility. The event was sponsored by Glaxo and the Oberoi. The event management was handled by Viraf Pocha of Landmark Events

-Since this event, the response has been amazing. The Municipal Corporation of Aurangabad has approached us as they would like to do something about accessibility in their city. ADAPT, another NGO working in this field has architects that understand the issue of accessibility and we will be using their expertise in making this city accessible.

-Mr. Suresh Kumar, Principal Secretary for Social Rehabilitation wants us to work with the Government in making this city accessible. He wanted to have a Disabilities NGO Forum to work with the government on how to fix accessibility in the city, by taking one municipal ward as a model. He will be getting back to us on that.

-The Indian Express has approached us as they would like to do an Access Audit of the important buildings in the city. If one of these buildings gets converted, they will then be writing an article to highlight that building, and its newly found accessibility. -Another issue is that of evacuation of disabled people in the event of an emergency, like a fire. We will be taking up this issue with the Fire Department.

-Mr. Pramod Navalkar has promised to convert all Nana Nani parks into being accessible for all.

-We had a meeting with ADAPT and found that the new BEST handicap accessible buses are anything but accessible. We will be meeting with BEST Chief to discuss this and how to fix this, with ADAPT and with their engineers.

-We also take this opportunity to share the limelight with Ashish Raheja, who has made retro-fitted one of his buildings with a ramp, to make it accessible. Well done!

-Employment for the Disabled is now a sub-team of AID, as the synergies were the same. Atul Desai, Architect and President of the Fellowship for the Physically Handicapped (FPH), along with us, visited one of the factories of Gitanjali Gems (one of India's largest diamond & jewellery export companies), who have tied up with us to make their factories accessible. Their President, Prosenjt Gupta is now a member of RBT, and was present at this meeting. He highlighted that Mr. Choksi, the chairman was very enthusiastic on making new avenues of employment of disabled people, by training them in jewellery manufacturing and diamond polishing. They are currently in the process of civil works to make the factory accessible after Mr. Atul Desai's suggestions.


7) CafT Revive:
Team leader : Hemanth Meka Rao - hemanth@hemanth.net

-The location we were working towards at the Asiatic Society did not work out finally. There were several issues such as the proximity of INS Angre and the Stamp Duty Office. As the Asiatic Society itself changed its stance from what they agreed to initially, it was not feasible without their full support.

-So we are back to the drawing board looking for a place for a CafT Revive. If you have any suggestions, join us or email us at hemanth@hemanth.net


8) Future of Roads (F.O.R) 
Team leader : Hem Tejuja - htejuja@hotmail.com

-We have approached the D Ward Officer, Mr. Achrekar to fix the pot-holes on Marine Drive. He said that these pot-holes were on their list and should be fixed in 10 days. However, that has not been the case. We will be pursuing this again with him.

-If there are any road related issues that interest you - be it traffic issues, pedestrian issues, road issues - anything? Then come and join this team.


9) Adopt a child
Team leader : Sohan Shah - drsohan@indiatimes.com

-Matthew from Magic Bus(www.magicbusindia.org) was here. He started Magic Bus 4 years ago, leaving the corporate world of Cox and Kings behind Wanted to do something with children but found many NGOs not compassionate. They had a rigid structure - come at a certain time only etc. 

-They work by simply taking slum children away on the weekends. It was a recreation based org. In the evenings, they used to run a rugby team, which is now the 2nd best team in India and have recently won an award in Kolkatta 

-Since then, they have changed from recreational support to a far more self-development oriented organisation. It is now a mentorship program which deals exclusively with children, teaching non-formal education to children such as socialization, emotional competence, physical health etc and find this a lot more relevant in childrens lives. They have a partnership with 15 existing organisations from where they pick up children.

-Where Revive Bombay comes in is : Working with Magic Bus in forming a mentorship program where RBT members become mentors to children - helping them with social issues - from writing a bio-data, to how to present themselves in an interview. Another way is RBT's team fundraising money to sponsor 30 children, and take ownership of these kids - not just by giving money, but by being involved in activities with these children. Magic Bus would give training initially, and would intensify the training as you participate more.

We had suggested a program called Adopt-a-child and this perfectly integrates with Magic Bus, especially since it is already a structured program.

If anyone is interested in joining Adopt-a-child, please contact Sohan.


3) MISCELLANEOUS
If you are receiving RBT Minutes in error, or would like to stop receiving these emails, kindly reply with the words "Remove" in the subject heading.

THANK YOU!
We ended the meeting with a BIG Thank You to Vikrant Chowgule, Abhijit and the Chateau Indage team for making this meeting possible.

NEXT MEETING :
The Next Revive Bombay meeting will be on JUNE 8th 2003 at CafT Basilico at Colaba - courtesy of Farhan Azmi. As always, 4:30pm.

Get involved now - and make a difference to your surroundings.

Looking forward to seeing you at the next RBT get-together!

RBT.

BACK