I am happy to share with you that ACCET87 Foundation has been granted Income Tax exemption under section 12AA. Our original application was rejected due to some technical issues and we had to reapply in March 2013. Getting the approval under 12AA was an onerous task and the credit goes to Boby Thomas for the extensive research and consistent follow-up with the Income Tax department to get this approval. Sudarsan & Saravanan (VP) also pitched in and actively helped Boby in this initiative. Thanks Boby, VP and Susee!
Our next initiative is to get 80G exemption which will help in getting donations for the Trust.
I am happy to share with all of you that the training of first batch under the ASSET87 program has been successfully completed. We trained a total of 490 students of the third year. We had 16 sessions of 3 hours each spread throughout the year and we had an overall attendance of over 70%. (More statistics will be shared in a future post).
There were some disruptions to our schedule due to the closing of all colleges in Tamilnadu due to the Sri Lankan Tamils issue but thanks to the unstinting support of the Principal and the staff of ACCET and the dedication and commitment of the training team lead by Mr. Sudhir, we managed to complete the training program in this academic year.
The final session of the program was conducted on April 17th the ASSET Program for 2012-13. We concluded the session with an closing ceremony which was attended in full strength by the 3rd year and 2nd year students, The Principal and HODs also attended the function.
The closing ceremony started off with a speech by the ASSET87 Coordinator Vilva.
We had instituted awards for Top Leader, Top Communicator and Top Learner based on their performance during the training sessions. The selection of the students was made by the trainers using the guidelines provided by us. The following students were selected for the three awards:
Top Leader: R Rhema (ECE) Top Communicator: K Jerlin (EEE) Top Learner: KJ Archana (ECE)
They received a cup, certificate and a pen-drive as part of the award. Each one of them expressed sincerely how this program has changed the way they talk and behave among their peers and family. Interesting to note that the top 3 were women and all of them had attended almost all the training sessions.
Ten other students were picked for their marked performance during the course of the training program
M Yogalakshmi (CSE)
Ragul (EEE)
M Anees Ahmed (CSE)
Osor Pertin (EEE)
Shamitru (CSE)
M Parani Bharathi (EEE)
B Kohila (EEE)
G Lakshmi Nivedetha (CSE)
PM Hariharan (ME)
Catharin Arathana (EEE)
These students received a merit certificate and a pen drive. All of them spoke for a couple of minutes and were very vocal in expressing gratitude to the ACCET 87 batch for giving them this training program.
Pen drives were given to the student volunteers who helped in organizing transport, food and logistics for the 16 training sessions.
Mr. Ravikumar (Placement Coordinator) gave a short speech where he suggested some changes in the training program content.
The Principal Ms. Mala gave her continued support for the program and said that she has been trumpeting this program wherever she talks as being one of a kind in any Engineering College in Tamilnadu.
The second year students had come in great numbers and expressed their eagerness to undergo this training program for the next year.
We presented the Master Trainer Mr. Sudhir with a ACCET87 Foundation watch as a souvenir. He has been a great source of inspiration for the students and he is extremely popular with all the students.
It was a great ending to the first year of the ASSET program. As usual, Siva concluded the event with his Vote of Thanks.
On behalf of ACCET87 Foundation, I would like to place on record our sincere appreciation of our friend Sivanantharaja. Much credit for the great success of this program goes to Siva. He not only coordinated the program in Karaikudi but was always there to iron out the many issues that came up and he also took great taking care of our batchmates who went to the college to monitor the sessions.
I also want to thank all our batchmates who attended the various sessions and gave their valuable feedback which helped us improve the program as it went by. I am sure that the next year’s sessions are going to be even better.
A many thanks are also due to Boby Thomas & Vilva. Boby has been in the background at all time taking care of the financial management and providing administrative support. From conceptualisation to execution, Vilva has been in the thick of the action at all times and has successfully steered the program. These two guys did an awesome job.
And many thanks to each of you for your financial & moral support. You made it happen!
When we first started mobilising funds for the SJC we had promised that we will have a transparent system and publish the details of the expenses on our website. It has taken a while to catch up on the accounting. Here is the summary of the expenses.
Accommodation – Chief Guest, Event Manager, Entertainement Team
7,800
Local transportation
7,500
Website – domain name & hosting for 2 years
5,700
Cleaning operations
5,000
Invitation printing & mailing
5,000
Trust formation
4,850
Grand Total
9,36,777
Disclosures
A few gifts were left after the event:
Four rechargeable torches (value Rs. 90 each). Saravanan, Krishnamurthy, Vilva and Sudarsan were given 1 each
Two sets of pens (value Rs. 225 each). Rajeshwar & Boby Thomas were given one set each
The amounts spent on gifts includes a sum of Rs. 3,500 incurred in buying a cellphone as a gift for Mr. Nehru who is Rajeshwar’s general assistant. Nehru has been a constant member of the team, serving us at all the meetings in Rajeshwar’s office and did countless chores for the SJC, most of the time after normal work hours. So, the SJC committee decided to give him a gift commensurate to his deeds.
The domain hosting has been provided by Rajeshwar’s company. We have been provided unlimited space and bandwidth for a nominal price of Rs. 2,000 per year.
Many of you contacted me saying that you had problems uploading the photos. There were some problems in the feature and I have developed a new upload feature using dropbox. which you can access here – https://accet87.in/sjc-photos-share/
Please first zip the files and make sure the zipped file is under 75mb in size. You can then proceed to upload the file.
Bigger the file longer will be he upload time. The upload time depends on your internet speed. Upload speed is usually lower than download speed.
The second session of ASSET87 was held on August 29, 2012 and it was my turn to visit ACCET and monitor the sessions. I also had to sort out some teething problems we had in the first session.
We had a team of 5 trainers, two from Chennai, two from Madurai and one from Coimbatore. The outline of the session.
Planning & Organizing Group Communication
Objective:
To convey information to a group of people
To instruct, brief, make decisions and solve problems
Learning Outcome:
As against dyadic communication (i.e., one to one) and mass communication (i.e., one to many), group communication implies a many to many communication.
Teamwork and group communication form an integral part of most organizations that embrace the concept to organizational climate and participative management – factories, corporate offices etc.
This is largely because complexity of decisions that has to be made when we are dealing with groups as opposed to individuals.
Although teams are different from groups in that former is a process-based while latter is function based, they share a communication processes. For example, when a company sends one of its project teams to develop software for its clients abroad, that particular team carries out a process. However, when the company nominates a group to discuss the changes it may wish to bring about in its manufacturing unit, the group considers a function.
In other words, team’s objective is set, and members are assigned specific duties to achieve a specific goal.
The group on the other hand is more involved in discussing and planning the achievement of their common goal.
Duration: 3hours
How it works?
First select 10 emerging leaders from day 1
Divide them into 10 groups
Given them their assignment sheets
Allocate 10 minutes for them to meet and submit a proposal
On approval of their proposal they start to work to complete their task in 45 minutes
Every 15 minutes ask the TL for a status update
Any time escalation requisition ask them to obtain their approval end of 40th minute
On completion of the task ask them to present
Allocate each team 5 minutes presentation time
Balance 3 minutes is for a Q&A session
The training sessions were well attended with around 90% attendance. In the afternoon, the Civil batch students turned up late. They were away in Pillayarpatti on a survey camp but enthusiastically came for the training session and went back after the session. I informally chatted with several students and they were all very positive about the impact of the training sessions. Each of them said they are already feeling more confident, just after 2 sessions. They also said that when they were given an opportunity to talk they did not do well and they regretted missing the opportunity and that they will make the best of it the next time they get their chance. I assure them that each of them will get a lot more opportunities as there were 14 sessions left.
Here are some pictures of the charts created by the students:
I am waiting for the video to be uploaded. I will add the link when it is up there.
The SJC Memento pack comprised the following items:
Bag printed with ACCET logo
Titan Watch (Men’s watch with ACCET87 logo for the male members of the batch and a ladies’ watch for ladies)
Eagle Planner customized with ACCET87 logo, message and database of ACCET87 members
Chettinad snack pack comprising seedai, murukku, and thenkuzhal
Here are some pictures of the mementos:
Titan Men’s Watch with ACCET87 Logo. (This picture does not have the logo)
Titan Raaga Ladies’ Watch
Watch in Action – Vasittar showing off!
Sailesh & Vasittar sporting their watches.
Bag with ACCET87 Logo
ACCET87 Planner (Eagle brand)
Planner first page
Inside the planner
ACCET87 Database
Database with contacts
Sorry, no pictures of the snacks. They vanished before we could shoot them!
The Core Committee decided to give mementos to:
Every ACCET 83-87 member who attended the event (irrespective of whether they made a contribution to the fund)
Every person who contributed to the ACCET87 fund
While everyone who attended collected their memento packs, the mementos of the others (minus the snack pack) are with the Core Committee members. We still need to get a bunch of watches(22 to be precise) from Titan and we expect them to be delivered before September 15th.
Please arrange to collect your memento packs soon. Please call or email one of us to coordinate: ***PRIVATE*** Sorry, the content here is visible only to logged in users. If you are a registered user, please log in to view this content.
We have extra planners and bags (around 15) which shall be given to the next 15 new contributors. So, if you have not sent your contribution yet, you have an incentive to do it now. Remember, only 15 left and they will go to the first 15 NEW contributors.
I know each one of you who came to the SJC took various pictures. We want each one of those photos. I am sure it will be an awesome collection.
I know uploading the photos using the Photo Album feature can be cumbersome for you. So, I suggest that you zip the folder with all photographs and upload it to our site directly from this page. I will extract them and create an album for you quickly.
If you have any questions or need help, please ask.
