The first meeting of the YourTime Club happened on Saturday, 11th April. We had Indu, Sunil, Harsh, Sony, Nisha, Ajay, Ritwick, Tarun and Saritha at the meeting.

Minutes of some the discussions which happened in the meeting:

• introduction of the concept, the motivations, the members and the possibilities
• understanding the situation
  • being laid-off and others being over-employed as as a result
  • the pressures
  • the support-groups
  • some stories by the members [the stories will appear at this blog in different forms soon]
• ideas for activities
  • work with the land – grow food there, involve the children in the neighbourhood, build a trash-compost-good-children-water eco-system
  • start an after-school for the children in the neighbourhood
  • start a library with books contributed by the members
  • use cow-dung to flatten the floor of the incomplete building and develop a skating-rink there!
  • skill-based workshops (photography, urban farming, temporary structures)
  • bringing projects to the group and involve the members in the research and brainstorming (Harsh and Sonny later accompanied Saritha on a research trip around the temples near the Halsur Lake)
• ideas for next time
  • walking in the neighbourhood
  • discussing the details for some of the ideas and starting to do things
  • Prayas (I) will introduce some processes and methods for the club members to work together

We have a google group for discussions and a SMS group now to receive updates and news,

• Email discussion list (google group): Visit the group’s page or send an email to yourtimeclub-subscribe@googlegroups.com.
• SMS group: Join this group by sending a SMS with the content, “ON yourtimeclub” to 09870807070 or visit this page.

Some photographs of the meeting are below. I also did a few audio recordings, I’ll be able to edit and add the audio clips later this week.

The meeting happened inside (was it really inside?) a temporary structure created by Nisha Nair from Mumbai. More details and photographs of Nisha’s work at CitySpinning in the next post.