Dear All
Some of us met on 20 December to try and firm up plans. After a lot of discussion that went round in circles, we were able to make what we think is real progress! Here are the notes from the meeting.
We do look forward to more participation from all of you. If we don't get moving, 6 January 2011 will be upon us, and none of the initiatives will have taken off!
We hope that this post on the blogspot will encourage and enable greater participation and involvement than we've seen...!
Alumni Foundation Meeting: 20 December 2009
Persons present
Shanta Rameshwar Rao
G Vijay Kumar
Mr Narayana
Asha Bhide
Veena Rani
Nanda
Vaneeta
Ayesha
Naval
Divya
Nandini
Mohammad
Sushil
Bharadwaj
Nitin Shah
Rasna
Vidyaranya Alumni Foundation
Foundation’s Bank Account has been created. (SB Acc no. 053310100005862) Andhra Bank, Saifabad Branch, Hyderabad (PAN no AABTV1815D).
Vidyaranya Virasat
Discussed Nitin Shah’s proposal called Vidyaranya Virasat, which is an active museum of memories and a live heritage laboratory. Talked about how this needed to be integrated into the school’s curricular activity as well as the need to start immediately as this is necessarily an ongoing programme. Explored how theatre, art, crafts etc could enhance and involve academic study and then also how the Virasat project could produce material from within the school that would become part of the 50th anniversary celebration. Looked at bringing in expertise in various areas from alumni as well as non-alumni to lead/guide Virasat projects, both short as well as longer workshops.
Anniversary
6, 7 and 8 January 2011 decided as celebration dates.
Tentative Programme:
6 January 2010, Thursday:
Start 9 am with morning assembly conducted by ex-students the way assemblies used to be in the 1960s and ’70s. Followed by Shantatamma’s talk to the assembly. Singing of shlokas and songs.
After the main assembly meeting, perhaps a separate one for junior students
Alumni:
Book launch and screening of Vidyaranya film
Perhaps, some in-house programmes for the school organised by teachers and students, something like an annual day celebration. Shantatamma suggested the making and wearing of costumes for the plays as costumes are not noramally used in Vidyaranya School days. Alternatively, classes can proceed as usual without disturbance by Alumni. Or alumni put up a play for the present students and staff.
Evening: Music or dance programme (Indian music/dance)
7 January 2010, Friday:
Morning: Screening of film for school students and staff—if staff and students are interested in seeing the film.
Followed by a half-day seminar on education. Classes for current students not to be disturbed.
Evening: Theatre (Anu Kapur of Director, National School of Drama?)
8 January 2010, Saturday
Morning: Basketball games and other sports.
Afternoon: ‘Climb the hill’
Evening: Music—Shantatamma suggested an evening of Jazz music
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Budgeting:
(i) The following guesstimates were arrived at to enable people to start collecting funds;
(ii) the Foundation has applied for a tax exemption certificate and it is expected to come through in March 2010;
(iii) Funds are also required, separately for the three-day function; budgets for the events have not yet been drawn up.
a. Retired Teacher’s Health Fund: 5 crore established as the corpus amount needed (on the assumptions that (i) a target of 5 crore will bring in about 2 crore (ii) the fund will be put into fixed deposits that will earn an interest of about 7% per annum (iii) about four by-pass surgeries, plus other minor surgeries, plus some amount for medicines etc could be covered).
b. Film on Education at Vidyaranya: 5 lakh at the outside
c. Book on Vidyaranya: 2 lakh
d. Estimates for enhancement (acoustics and air conditioning) of the halls and labs yet to be arrived at with inputs from school. Vaneeta is to bring a specialist to check the halls; the specialist will give us a quote. However, 50 lakh is put up as a working figure.
e. Estimates for building of books and music library yet to be arrived at with input from school. It was decided that we could start off with a figure of about 2 lakh.
f. Estimates required for the maintenance of the Teacher’s Club on the school premises. A working figure of 1 lakh a year could be taken as average—this would therefore require a corpus of about 15 lakh in FDs to generate an interest of 1 lakh pa.
Total: 5.74 crore (rounded off to 6 crore). This target should bring us about 3–3.5 crore
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The school offered the Foundation the use of one of the cottages in the school compound as it’s office.
