 which will be open to the whole community. And then we'll be having some detailed, in-depth, facilitated discussions with a randomly selected group of Orvilleans. And this process will be facilitated by myself, by Helen, who's sitting back there, from the facilitator pool, who's actually facilitated participatory budgeting processes before in other spaces, and Avinash, who worked on the report with me. So I'm just going to run you through the outline of this process. So the first session is today. We are here right now, Unity Pavilion, Introduction to the Process and Presentation of the Annual Report. Then next Tuesday, the more detailed Q&A session, as I mentioned, to learn more about the various sectors that the BCC supports. And both of these events are open to the full community. This will be followed by a couple of facilitated sessions with the randomly selected group. And in these in-depth sessions, we're going to focus on those key questions. So in the first session, we'll focus on those priority areas for community funding and how this is to be reflected in our budgetary allocations. And in the second session, we'll focus on the two questions of key missing services or services that ought to get more support, as well as where should funds come from to support this. And then we'll take all of this and circle it back to the community at large. So of course, all of this timeline is going to be a little bit subject to the COVID restrictions. So I'm very much crossing my fingers and hoping that everything will continue to work out. So on Tuesday, February 1st, we're hoping to present back the outcomes of the facilitated processes with the wider community. And following that, we're going to launch a survey, which will ask the same questions to all community members. Now, we very much hope that this is going to be an iterative process. So we're hoping that people are coming here to this presentation, coming to the Q&A, coming to the presentation back, and seeing, hey, when a core group of people got together and looked at this for several hours, what did they come up with? And to inform, when you participate in the survey, to inform, build on all of that. So the survey will likely ask you, hey, these were the outcomes from the facilitated discussions. How much do you agree with this? And are there any changes that you would still want to make at this stage? You can go back. We'll take that back, and we'll look at the survey results, and then we'll compile them against the results that we received after the facilitated sessions, as well as the next steps that we propose as BCC, having all of those results with us. So why should any of you participate in this process? I know when I speak to people about BCC, about budgets, a lot of people feel intimidated. They feel like I'm not a numbers person. They don't know what they have to offer to such a process. So why should any of you participate? Well, first of all, this process is really intended to be educational. It's an opportunity to deepen your understanding of our community's budgeting process and also the services that it supports. Then this process is also intended to create shared understanding, which I think is really important for all of us here in this community, by providing a space for all our millions to interact with other community members on our needs and priorities as a community and to inform BCC's budgeting process as a result. And finally, this process is in service of the development of ORVO to inform how the budget can be allocated to best support ORVO's aspirations and needs. So some of you might ask, why is there a randomly selected group? Why are all of the sessions just simply open to everyone? So first of all, we can only really provide quality facilitation for a sets and committed group, realistically of under 30 participants. So we decided to draw up to 30 people at random from the master list for these facilitated sessions because we really wanted to get feedback from a wide range of community members, rather than just having people chosen to represent various sectors, which is often how it's been done in the past. And we're really hoping that this is going to enable us to gain a deeper understanding of how the budget actually impacts the wider community and what changes might be needed going forward. So what will be the outcome of this process? We're going to use the outcomes to inform the upcoming city services budget. It's really important to note that if any really major changes are requested out of this process, these are going to be phased in over a longer period of time to avoid any abrupt changes for services, those who are supported by them, as well as those working in them. And finally, the BCC may need your support in actually implementing the outcomes that are arrived at. We're all part of a fabric of Orville's budget. So yeah, we hope you'll join us. All right. So with that, we'll move to the focus of today's presentation, which is a presentation of the report of the last financial year, which ran from April 2020 to March 2021. For those of you who are not familiar. So as I mentioned, this report was prepared by myself and Abinash, who is a fellow Orvillean and a resource person for BCC with the feedback of many community members. So we thought this would be a really good place to start our community budgeting process as it gives you the overview of the community budget over a full year. This presentation is available online as a website, which you can view anytime in the comfort of your own home or maybe even I'd like to invite you to look at it with your teams, look at it together and bring it into your workplaces. So the URL is budget.orville.org.in. So the idea for such a budget actually cropped up in both of our heads at the same time as these ideas tend to do. And somehow we ended up talking about it. And somehow we ended up actually both being willing to dedicate time going forward to make it happen. We then brought it to the wider BCC team who also supported this initiative. And so here we are today, about six months later. Just to say that during this process, we received support from the SIHOB team at CSR, as well as from Basant, I'm not sure if he's here today, who's a programmer at Uwabi and who's also now helping us to take this project forward in new and exciting ways. So our intention is really to raise awareness in our community about how our collective funds are generated and shared so we can all enter into a much more conscious and engaged relationship with how we participate in serving this community. So with that, I'd like to invite us all to just pause and find a moment of quiet, maybe even close your eyes if that serves you and just connect to a space of just real open mind, curiosity and receptivity so that we're able to absorb more than just facts and figures as we enter into this presentation. Hi, everyone. My name is Avinash. For those who don't know, which is probably most of you. Can you hear me? Yeah, okay, sorry. Well, my name is Avinash. Yeah, let's just maybe get started. So let's begin by getting a picture of the overall contributions, disbursements and reserves in 2021. The overall contributions to city services was 2,170 lakhs. These contributions came from both within and beyond the community. Last year, internal contributions were close to 90% of the total contributions to city services. This represents 6.1% of the total income generated by Auroville in 2021. When I say 2021, I mean fiscal year 2020, 2021. Internal contributions were 12.2% lower than the previous year due to the impact of COVID. This is not an accurate representation of the reduction in income generated in our community because we also received pending contributions from previous years. So the reduction in income generated is actually more significant than 12.2%. External contributions were 10.6% of the income to city services. And this was 253% higher than the previous year due to the increased economic relief contributions during that first COVID year. So in regular years, the external contributions to city services are generally lower than 10% of the overall. We'd like to take a moment here to thank all of those who contributed to Auroville from within and beyond the community during this difficult time. Let's now look at the contributions per source in a bit more detail. The highest contributors were Auroville's commercial units and activities coming in at 37% of the total or 802 lakhs. Next were returns on the investments of Auroville funds by the financial services. We then have individual monthly contributions made by Aurovilleans, newcomers and volunteers as well as extra donations from community members. Then we have the external contributions. Out of this, 64% was a part of the GOI grant for SIA. 24% were other Indian contributions and 12% were foreign contributions. Auroville as a whole received significant other external donations, but these are specified to particular projects, infrastructure or services and not channeled through city services. Which the yellow line intersects the purple line that is the beginning of the financial year 2021. So we started the financial year 2021 with reserves of 620 lakh, which was 5.8 months of buffer at the budgetary rate of 2021. Although that rate was significantly reduced because of COVID because we managed disbursements during that period. So as you can see, if you look at the chart, yeah, if you can just draw, yeah. So for the major part of the year, the reserves were maintained fairly evenly until the end in which there was that sudden spike at the very end of the financial year. You can see that's March from February to March. So just wanna explain that this is because we had an influx of unexpected pending contributions that came in right in that month. We also had the GOI grant that had been really delayed in 2021 that came in right at the end. So yeah, so we had all of a sudden a big spike. For the rest of the year, that even maintaining was actually achieved by projecting income months to months. So we were getting our income figures every month and adjusting projected disbursements against those because there was so much economic uncertainty. So we were just trying to manage month to month. I personally was quite impressed at the end of the year figures seeing how well that was done because if you look at the internal income, it was reduced by 12.2% whereas the disbursements were reduced by 13.1%. So we're looking at a less than 10% margin of error, so to speak. But that said, I'm even more impressed with that sudden spike, all of the influx of funds that we got at the end of the year that actually made us end this financial year, this COVID year with the highest reserves that city services has ever had. Yeah, you can laugh, it's quite incredible. At the same time, I wanna say that we're grateful for these extra reserves because actually the full financial impact of COVID we're only gonna really see next year because of the way that we collect contributions which are based on the previous year cycle. So we're still not out of the woods in terms of really understanding what the economic impact is. So it's not a bad thing that we've got reserves at this stage. And if you can just show the 1920 page. So basically to understand how these figures actually compare with 1920, which would have been a so-called normal year and then 2021 a totally abnormal year, we created a whole separate page, it's up there comparison with financial year 1920. We won't go through this today, but if you're curious and you're wanting to really kind of look at these trends and what changed, you can check out that page in more details. Okay, so we'll now get into the sectors. Now hand it over to Avinash. Okay, so let's get into the sectors. As we get into the sectors, you'll see that we have followed a basic template in order to present our data in what we hope is an accessible way. You will see the annual disbursements towards that sector and what percentage of the total disbursements it is. And then we answer three questions. How many services? How many people serving? And who is served in each sector? There will be variations in the way we show data in each sector based on what seemed most appropriate for each. Please note that there are many other units, services and projects that are active in these sectors. Our report only covers those supported by city services, but we hope that an overarching presentation can be developed in the future. So education. Auroville's education budget supports the youth within the community and surrounding villages, as well as continuing education for adults, attempting to manifest the community's founding ideal of being a place of unending education. It is the biggest sector by disbursements with 509 lakhs disburses, accounting for 24% of the disburse budget. That's almost a quarter. We have combined Auroville schools and outreach schools, as well as the admin and adult educational services within the sector. So examples of these are like in education centers, we have Udavi, last school, transition school, IKM for admin and support. We have the SIR administration or teacher center and in other services we have Savitri Bhavan and the library for example. All this totals to 37 different services. There are 3,424 students being served at the educational centers. There are also nine apprenticeship maintenance given from city services. In total, there are 631 people serving in this sector, 520 of which are supported by city services. Let's go to the next one. So the next biggest sector by disbursements was the social support sector, which accounted for 18.7% of last year's disbursements. This covers various forms of financial support that are available to community members. These are children's maintenance is available to all children of Auroville whose families could do with the extra financial support. Children's nutrition budget that pays for the lunches of students in Auroville schools. Personal and social support maintenances that are granted to Aurovillians with health issues that limit their ability to work or to those who are over 65 and have been living and working in Auroville for a long time. Aside from these maintenances, there is also a personal emergency fund that provides one time support for Aurovillians in financial difficulty for expenses such as visa or passport fees. There's also bridging maintenance for those who are transitioning between workplaces, maternity maintenances for mothers during pregnancy and postpartum, temporary emergency maintenances that was actually created in the last financial year for those Aurovillians working in units or services that could no longer support them during the financially difficult period last year. And finally, another category of support for those who offer their time in multiple services and so do not receive maintenances from anyone shown here in the other activities Auroville. In total, 405 lakhs were dispersed through these different means which is equivalent to 211 adult full-time maintenances. In the last financial year, the allocations in this sector increased by 30.5% due to the economically precarious situation. We'd like to close on this with a quote from the mother, although we admit we are not there yet. The organization should be such, should be so arranged that the material needs of everyone are assured, not according to the ideas of rights and equality, but on the basis of the minimum needs. And once that is established, each one should be free to organize his life according to, not according to his financial means, but his inner capacities. Many services have emerged to meet the basic needs of Aurovillians, such as PTDC and Nandini, often referred to as the prosperity services. There is also a range of municipal services that meet the needs of the township as a whole, such as the road service, eco service, puncture service, et cetera. In total, there are 177 people serving in 18 sectors in this, sorry, 18 services in this sector, serving not only Aurovillians and newcomers, but also volunteers and guests. We just thought that quote was funny, but the health sector accounted for 6.4% of the total budget with 139 lakhs dispersed. There are 114 people serving in this sector, 81 of whom are supported by city services. Those served are, of course, the Aurovill community and the Bioregion at large, but it wasn't possible to arrive at one number for those served in this sector. And so you can see a description here just to give you a sense of how much good work these services are doing. Services in this sector include Sante Health Center, Integrated Animal Care, Tental Center, et cetera. You can see a full list there. Forest. This budget goes to the Forest Group, whose main objectives are to increase the forest cover, protect water tables, protect the land and maintain the existing forests, work which has been going on since the very beginning of Auroville. The forest sector saw 126 lakhs dispersed towards it, accounting for 5.8% of the annual budget. There are 46 communities and one nursery and herbarium in this budget. The budget for the forests are distributed directly to the forest group that shares among the different forest communities as required. In total, there are over 130 people serving and those served include the Auroville community and its visitors, local plant and animal species, as well as practitioners of traditional medicine and scientists and students of botany and zoology. As we all should know, the Auroville community is self-organized and appoints a range of groups to take care of various aspects of the organization of community life and development. In this organization sector, we have Auroville's administrative bodies and working groups such as the RAS, the TDC, SAVI, the BCC, et cetera, totaling 13. Over 43 people work in this sector, many of whom volunteer their time while being engaged in other Auroville activities. They serve the whole Auroville community, Aurovilleans, newcomers, volunteers, guests and Auroville entities like units and services. A total of 101 lacs was dispersed in this sector, accounting for about 4.6% of the budget. This chart here shows the distribution of the budget in this sector and you can see how much was dispersed exactly by hovering over it. Yeah, now I'm gonna hand it over to Surya Mai. Thank you. Yeah, just to say, when you saw me hover on that pie chart earlier, so when you're checking out this website at home, like there are a lot of interactive features and actually even on some of the charts, they are drill down. So if you go to the top right corner of the chart and you click, you might get several other layers of data so you can play with that at home. Arts, culture and sports. So in a dream, the mother envisions that, quote, beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all. The ability to share in the joy it brings would be limited only by the capacities of each one and not by social or financial position. She also shared that physical culture is the best way of developing the consciousness of the body and the more the body is conscious, the more it is capable of receiving the divine forces that are at work to transform it. So Orville has a proliferation of artistic expression and a strong ethos of physical education and our community, of course, regularly gathers for cultural events and celebrations and such activities fall within the arts, culture and sports sector that received 72 lakhs in the last financial year, accounting for 3% of the budget. So there's budgetary support for artistic performances by Orvillean and visiting artists in Orville venues. Centers for physical education, such as La Piscine Swing Pool, the Pitanga Center and community sports grounds in certitude, aspiration and new creation are also community supported facilities. There is a budget for community celebrations such as gatherings at the Matrimandir at the occasion of Orville's birthday, cultural celebrations such as Dipavali and events at the Youth Center. Budgets in the sector support 18 services with a total of 80 people serving within them, including 61 supported by city services in 2021. Yeah, supported to share Orville's artistic, cultural and physical education and performance with not only Orvilleans, newcomers, volunteers and guests, but also members of the surrounding population of all ages with free artistic and cultural events as well as sports facilities. Farms, so farming in Orville is supported by a budget allocated via the farm group to Orville Farms and FoodLink, which is a central collection and distribution service for Orville's farm produce. The farm group is made up of Orville's farmers and is responsible for the stewardship of approximately 372 acres of land farmed by Orvilleans in 21 farms. Its goal is to create and maintain a healthy and conscious farming system integrated with and providing as much food as possible for Orville while taking into consideration the needs and best interests of both the land and the Orville community. A total of 59 lakhs was dispersed to farm sector last financial year, accounting for 3% of the budget. As with forests, although there are 22 services, disbursements are made directly to the farm group that shares their budget internally between the different farms. There are over 120 people serving in the sector, about 45 Orvillians, 75 employed, and many volunteering. The sector, of course, serves the whole Orville community, either directly to residents or through our community kitchens, restaurants, and outlets. Orville's outreach budget supports eight services in sharing and communicating the life and development of Orville within the community and beyond. So we know the term outreach is often used for village outreach activities, but in this report, those are merged into the sector of activity they fall under, basically all of them in education and health. So our so-called outreach sector includes eight services, such as Orville Radio, who's live streaming this event. Thank you. The visitor center, the guest registration group, and has a total of 50 people serving in it, 40 of which are supported by city services. 50 lakhs were dispersed to the sector, making up 2% of the budget. It's important to note that a large portion of this is actually generated by the sector itself. For example, the visitor center parking income all gets collected by city services. As for who is served, we couldn't give you one number, because it's a mix of online and in-person, so we have various metrics for each of these services. So for example, visitor center parking typically receives 800,000 people per year, while Orville Radio's content is accessed by about 50,000 people. So we encourage you to take a look at that section over there to look into that in more detail when you have time, if you're interested. Land. So land is the second largest asset of Orville after human resources. This was a description offered to us by Helena from the land board, and we thought it was so beautifully put. So Orville land is not only dear but actually sacred to many of us, and it's under the care of the land board, whose functioning is provided for by the Orville city services budget. So the main goal of the land board is to procure land for Orville and to protect existing land. So the land sector consists of two services, the land board and the lands for Orville Unified Fundraising Team. The sector accounts for 2% of the dispersed budget with a total of 36 lakhs. These funds are not actually used towards land purchase. These go towards human resources and administrative expenses of the sector. In total, 36 people are serving the sector, 28 of whom are supported by city services. So Matrimandir, as many of you know, is known as the soul of Orville and intended as a place for trying to find one's consciousness. The Matrimandir and Park of Unity are open for Orvillians, newcomers, guests, visitors for silent concentration but also for collective gatherings, such as meditations for Orville's birthday and other concerts and plays throughout the year. The budget from city services is just over 1% of last year's disbursements coming in at 23 lakhs. And these funds support the close to 170 people, Orvillians and employees working here, in part. Just to note that Matrimandir receives significant additional funds from individual donors and also the support of many other people who volunteer there. Housing. So last year, the housing sector saw 17.5 lakhs dispersed from CS, accounting for 1% of the budget. Usually, there would be more funds allocated towards housing repairs, but this was reduced in that year due to the COVID budget restrictions. So again, the city services funding does not go into the actual construction of housing just like in land, but to actually support the administration of the services in the sector, as well as housing repairs. So housing service, housing board and Kailash are the three services supported in this sector. There are 16 people serving here and yeah, Orvillians, newcomers, youth volunteers are all people who are served through these services. So thank you for listening. That was all of the sectors. We really want to end by saying that of course, facts and figures cannot capture the care, the dedication, the time, the aspirations and the impact of all those who are contributing to the dream of Orville. And as we said, there are so many other unit services projects that don't fall within the city services budget. Regarding our facts and figures, we did our best to collect the most accurate that we could. We used city services records and we also connected a lot of the services directly to check in with them. We also used information that was shared from their narrative reports, so a lot of the language here actually comes from the reports of the sectors themselves. So we hope that you'll spend more time on this website, that it contributes to a culture of transparency and accountability in our community and that basically it serves as an effective and meaningful educational resource. So please share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues, share it with your coworkers. Tell them what you learned. Once again, I want to repeat the intention we shared at the very beginning, our intention is really to raise awareness in our community about how our collective funds are generated and shared so that we can all enter into a more conscious and engaged relationship with how we participate in serving this community. Thank you. So we went a lot faster than we thought we would. I hope we weren't speaking too fast. So we have some time. We're going to open up for questions. Mahi, would you help me take names? Thank you. So I'm just going to start by opening just for questions really specifically on the presentations. I realize people here might have wider questions about BCC, but let's first just start with questions on the presentations you just heard. Kripa, can you give her the mic? Avinash, that's the second mic under you. You can come up here. Just before we start, can I invite the BCC members in the room to just sit here so we can all participate in answering? And everyone knows who you are. Ratinam, I can see you. Inga, Enrika, Orosugan, Mahi, Matan. Thank you. Hans, actually I'm going to pass the mic around so that everyone can just introduce themselves and you can hear their voice. My name is Ratinam. I work in the Unity Fund and I'm a member of BCC. Anything else? Thank you. I'm Enrika and I'm a member of BCC and I work also in BCC office, specifically in BCC care. Who is taking care of the maintenance and the contribution and land schemes, this kind of stuff. Good evening to all. Welcome. So my name is Orosugan. I'm part of the BCC. And I'm also part of the Sante Coordination. I think I'll be talking to a lot of people about the COVID. Thank you. I'm Hans representing the Green Group in the BCC, so the farm group and the forest group. I'm doing this for three years now. I must say that I would have been very happy if I would have something like this when we started. I found it like really, because when I started three years ago, I seriously had no idea. And it took quite a while before I had an idea. After three years, I know something, I think. My name is Inge. I'm since four or five years now in the BCC. I am mostly now focusing on budgeting for the next year. Hello, everyone. My name is Madan. I'm with the BCC since June 2021. I'm also taking care of the general administration in the BCC office. Thank you. Hi, I'm Mahi. I also work at Transition School. I'm a BCC member since 2019, I think. You might see me on the road on a horse. Yeah, so I could add that I've also been a BCC member since June of last year, so coming close to two years now. I'm active in research. I run a service called the Research Platform here in Orville. I do a lot around community processes. And in BCC, I do a lot of communications and this kind of community process work. Kuipa. No, just a very practical question on your presentation. On your page on housing, you talk about three projects. And one of them is Kailash. Apart from getting a half a maintenance, we don't get any support from the BCC. So I was wondering how we enter your chart and how that was considered. Yeah, so basically any service that receives any amount of support from city services is obviously accounted for in city service. So it enters into our report. It's that simple. There's no minimum threshold of support that you receive that makes you eligible to enter into the report. So if you receive any funds from CS, you're in our report. You're in our figures. Okay, because as it comes under housing, one gets the impression that we're getting some kind of support linked to housing. And it's a half maintenance that's being given. It's not linked at all with any support with the building or the housing as such because it's misleading, I find. So if you... Education. Yeah, and it's educational. So when I was presenting, I was explaining that the budget that goes into the housing sector goes towards human resources and administrative expenses primarily. That's true for the housing service. It's true for the housing board. There is usually an additional house repairs budget that gets channeled through housing service. In 2021, exceptionally, that was lower. But otherwise, it's just HR and administration. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Well, we have shown the disbursements in each sector in other... sorry, in each service in other sectors, so we could do something similar here taking this feedback on. And then people will know exactly how much went in. So I think Kripa, what Avinash is asking you is, do you want to see on every single page exactly how much money goes to every single service or anyone else here? No, no, I don't know. Actually, it's just that I'm concerned by Kailash and I'm concerned by this, and when I see this, I'm like, how do we fit into this? So I don't know. I think this presentation is great and it gives us a good overview. But because this concerns my sector of work particularly, I don't feel like it... But once you clarify saying it's clearly about maintenance and administration, then it works. So if you have housing like this, it gives me the wrong impression, that's all. So I don't know if generally others feel the need or not. I just felt like clarifying this bit. And so since Fabian is on our team and on Kailash, we obviously just asked him. So we had that discussion with him regarding Kailash rather than you or the other people there. We also have about an FAQ page on this website that explains more. We didn't present on that here, but there is some explanation of that. And as we receive more feedback, we're happy to incorporate into it as well. Are there any other questions? So Mahi is taking names. Avinash, you can just follow her. So you could explain a little bit what is the process that you follow to allocate funds to projects that come to this presentation. It will be interesting to see for them to know why some of them get that much and why some of them get less. What is your process of inquiry? How you check that this request is genuine? And when you disperse, how are the mechanisms that you have to ensure that the money allocated is actually utilized properly? So these two questions would like to ask. Thank you. I wasn't actually listening properly to the question. I think I can answer a little bit. First of it, there's a lot of history in this budget. So that means the moment you start being part of the BCC, there's already a budget, thankfully. So that is one thing. There's a lot of history. Then there's a lot of requests that are coming which actually makes us look at how is it actually, it makes us aware about what is actually going where. So that is the second thing. Another thing is that is an exercise in which we are doing now and that's also why we are here. We are asking the different sectors to tell us what is your budget request? What do you actually need? How many maintenance do you need? How many budget do you need, et cetera? So that gives a lot of information. Two years ago, we asked all the services what would you ideally need? What would you really, if you were really, if we could give you anything that you need? So that's actually, that gave a lot of nice information. So this is basically how, in a nutshell, I think, requests, a yearly request in which everybody has to say and the history, does it answer a little bit? The intention of this gathering is to create awareness how we manage our city services budget. So I think this is an attempt, I think, to be more participatory. We have requests coming from all the sectors, but the BCC is the only body that actually takes the final decision and I'm not saying you're doing a good job, but I think it will be good that this becomes more open than everybody participates and says, okay, we feel belief that this budget requires more or less, and there is a better discussion about what are the priorities of our community? What are the sectors that actually need to be strengthened? What are the sectors that are actually doing well? And so that is more or less what I think this intention, if I'm correct. I think you came late because I described the whole participatory budgeting process and all of those questions. So I think everyone here has heard it. I think that was a very useful and a very structured presentation. I just had a slightly different curiosity. So you have an annual disbursement and income of say about 20 crores and you roughly disburse about 20 crores. I was just curious that you must be receiving a lot of requests like Hans said about, so ideally like your disbursements in a sense are constrained by your resources. If you were to look at reasonable requests that you're receiving, what would be the size of the city services budget? Like in the ballpark, would you need something like 25 crores or 40 crores to be able to do justice to reasonable requests if you have some idea of that number? So I'm relatively new. I think I just joined 20 in the year 2022. So but to answer your question, I think like what does Mark asked, I think we have a criteria like for example, they were talking about the major cost goes into the maintenance or the recurring expense on recurring expense. So we by historically have some kind of a base like for example a monthly about 44 lakhs is for a recurring expense. So that is what we have in our hand. And similarly for maintenance, as we said, I think there was an exercise that was done two years ago. And for farm group, there is an allocated about 40 maintenance that they requested. So that is the base that we use to allocate the maintenance. If there is any kind of a new request for farm group and then we meet the group to see if there is a necessary and then we take a decision to increase the maintenance of that, then we go to a process, we ask the FMC for approval to increase the maintenance. That is it. To answer your question about where we need to go, I think that is the base that we are doing it now. So we are going to increase the recurring or the non-recurring expense and we need like for the health needs a big boost if it needs two percentage more income. So that we really don't have an idea. That we are looking now. And that is the reason why we are having this participatory budget to get that answer, like what amount, where we need to have this. So again, when we look into our income, I think this is only one year. So we really can't come, what is our internal source income that we generate and what we disperse. But in the further way, we want to put in a way that we get all the needs that is done and then look for also resources. That is the third question, like where do we get funds? Like we are going to have a budget, but where do we get that funds? So that is the third question that comes in this budget also. So that is... I would like to add, what I often heard is, I don't need to ask, they will not give. If you can take this out of your mind and you give us a real feedback what this community feels to need as basic, not as only dreaming to have an airplane and you don't hesitate to share with us your needs. It's our duty then to look into and it is mother's duty to fulfill the needs. If they are honestly and truly she will fill the needs. We have seen it in the budgeting of the corona year. We started to look only on the expenses and to take really only the needs and really to ask the services, please look what you really need. We did it, beautiful. We asked the community, the units please see what you can share from your reserves, which they did. So what we came up with was an increase. Now suddenly we have 900 lakhs reserves, so-called reserves. Now it's our duty to say what we do with these reserves. We keep it as reserves because we are fear-based because we think perhaps one day we need reserves of five months or do we have the needs in the community which can be fulfilled without risking our safety and our basic needs. Is it somehow coming? Good. No, I wanted to bring some element of answer to Marc because your question presumes but there is no such system. So we have to work with uncertainties. So I think when I was in the BCC I think this is still the case today with a lot of meeting with people who express their needs. It's not just an email that they sent and a budget. There is a process of communication and this process of communication is extremely important because this when in fact we have the occasion to circulate the meaning and this circulation of the meaning of our release what keeps within the frame. There is no exaggeration or misutilization. I think it's the main element and I always plead it for more communication whether with the commercial units or with the services so that we don't deal only with the Excel sheets and numbers because that's the humanizing. So what about this? Is there in the BCC now trying to communicate more with people? Yes, therefore we are sitting here therefore we are doing this, therefore we are inviting and yes I'm focusing the full time of my life in the next few months only to receive you, to talk to you to fill up forms which are boring but to listen to you and to feel you and to communicate with the other team members and we see then what is budgeting possible. It's a new way of budgeting. Please pass by in the BCC office, share what you think what you want to offer to this community and we will see how we compile it Suyama is great in this she will just compile it and then we will see what we can do out of it. We will keep contact with you we will keep you informed this came up, this came up, this came up we keep you in the loop of taking decisions together. This is why we are sitting here and trying something new and see how we can make it. Hello, Giulietta is my name housing that's my question there's 1% for housing we don't own the house we live in so we have stewards of the housing and there's no budget to repair it so do you think it has to come from the people's own pocket like the maintenance can there be an increase in the housing repair section that is my request because I think that is really, really low. The 1% for housing is very, very low because during the year that we work the numbers of this year actually what we did was dumping down those numbers the housing was really we didn't do anything on housing repair so last year last year so the 1% really does not show anything but it must be one thing must be very clear even if it would be a normal year this is just repair what we are talking about so not the value of the housing no construction and etc just repair so the 1% does not give a real feel when you go to the housing when anybody goes to the housing they said my pocket is empty I cannot repair your house and I think there are quite some requests for housing repair so my concern would be to raise that housing repair we have the lucky situation now that we are sitting next to the housing we are sharing one office so we see you coming in and we hear you and we see so before we were on the second floor floating now we are on the ground and we see reality we are in close contact with a new housing board we are in close contact with the housing service we are trying to see the needs they just came yesterday again and they are coming up their budget request form and I told them please you put reality and please don't forget you have how many houses and they will see now what they really need the aim is that it is not going on the auto-villians who has already to build the house from their pocket or to repair the house from the pocket because in the end it is not yours it's the asset of auto-vill we have to repair and to maintain this is something that we face it in so if my memory serves me and other BC members can correct me that this year the housing repair budget in addition to this is 36 lakhs so already this year it's already an additional 36 lakhs in this running year Mahi is following I heard a third question from Mark which I don't think has been totally addressed so I'm going to put it again rather pithily how do you ensure value for money means once you've decided that the budget request is reasonable and you disperse it is the follow up to how that service is performing and delivering and so on because are they reporting back I personally I feel this could be a little bit increased or whatever improved I can start by answering that question and you guys can go next so I would say the first thing is this exercise that we did right here so what's never been shown before is the actual so-called beneficiaries so this is the first time that we are actually showing this now there is reporting that happens from all the services that receive a budget they submit a narrative report every single year and in those reports BCC is able to read what kind of services were provided what were the challenges of that service during the year and those narrative reports are read in all of our budgeting processes and for the first time we're doing this broader communication exercise and we're actually showing that more narrative content here and so this raises really collective and community awareness about how services that are supported by the BCC are serving the wider community so it really puts that out there in the open another thing is historically Stephanie she's not here anymore but when she joined the BCC she started a BCC review section which was being run by her and up until recently by Nielen and this was the first time that in the BCC office there was actually a review of the expenses of the services so to put it really simply if someone had gotten a budget you know to pay for dog food integrated animal care someone checked and saw and looked oh did they actually spend this on dog food did they buy ice cream at tanto so that level was done I think though that there is scope for a much more meaningful form of review which is not just around how every rupian paisa has accounted for I mean I think it's good that it's there but I think that if I can make that claim most of us would care more about how these services are actually serving the wider community like this actual impact and human level we published a couple of times already saying that there is space for one more BCC member and that we within our team had identified that a new member could most meaningfully contribute if they would be willing to take up that role of a full-time job so if anyone here or anyone you know is interested and really has the skills in communicating with services talking has probably management skills themselves has done management in terms of how to reach more people how to be more efficient and all of those aspects in terms of management then that would be a great candidate for this role and in the meantime this team is just going to continue to do that. Thank you for the very complete and beautiful presentation. I have two questions one is if we open up the community interactions obviously there could be more awareness and early for everyone and perhaps you will be able to have a lot more requests for the budget and do you have some strategies to actually to grow the budget to grow the funding so that the pie gets bigger and before it is divided by sector to meet the increasing requests the second question is I would like personally to see the budget that funds experiments in Auroville where there are newcomers, Aurovillians youth that feel inside themselves what they would like to really do and contribute in this month in this year not exactly restricting themselves or dedicate to one sector as such but to see how life guides them so in that way perhaps they will grow more integrally will there be a budget for such kind of people and experiments because I have heard instances where people work in a place and because of the maintenance or something they stay on in that role while inside of them they may have already wanted to move on to do something else so could there be budget support for that integral development and the contribution full of flow which is I feel much needed for the future that is very much changing so there was a question on the income and on this part Inge do you want to I cannot reply how to increase the pie but I know it will increase as per the needs but there are other people who knows it better I can tell you fill up the form whoever feels I would like to try this fill up the new form it's in the auto net we can put it tomorrow again in the auto net so that you have access to it fill it up give it a chance put your full heart in and you will see what comes this is the only thing what I can tell you yeah never stay somewhere where your heart is no longer jumping and joyful you will block yourself and you will block the full community just for money I hope we are not here for this I hope we can make a step just to add to the first question about increasing the pie that is the thing that we are talking about the reserves so reserves is the base that we have but we always feel if we have a good intention and good thing the pie will increase we have a good intention to work her grace will give that money so that money is not just to stand as a reserve so if we have to do something beautiful that will come that is what our feeling is that is why we are looking for this increase but whenever we look into new requests and things in mind that we have a reserve that we don't go we don't just give everything we have something in base so that we can give it out I think that just to add what I guess so the first question about growing the pie that is also one of the questions of the community budgeting process is how the income to the city services should come because right now city services gets you saw on the presentation the sources of income so we don't know how to make it grow more except for the goodwill of the various contributors including people to answer the second question to answer the second question we I guess would have to create a new category of maintenance for people who are exploring different types of work if there are currently people participating in working in different sectors in different services part-time for that we have the section I think it was under social services called other orbital activities we were and apprenticeships for youth we were having we had ideas about increasing the number of maintenance within this other orbital activities so that more people working giving all of their time to orville but not limited to one workplace would be able to be supported does that kind of answer the question cool working yeah first of all I want to thank all of you because what's happened to the what's happened today here has never happened before it's really wow I hope all the other group will follow your process because you know for example it's 30 years I'm here but for me the BCC was always something there also the FMC I don't know you know you're quite we are doing our job they are doing their job it's not a link between us that is very important it's something finally thank you really thank you what I want to ask for example now I stopped because during the COVID for us was really really hard to survive we managed and we did and I stopped to give contribution to the school I would like to ask to you I don't know the situation the real situation of the school instead of give maybe something to every school there is some school who is more needed than the other one and maybe you can you can say to us to who is more in need more the contribution I can ask that I can ask to you normally I give a small amount to all the school no then because I don't know if there is some school who is more needed than the other one and maybe you can address the story anyway thank you thank you very much yeah so okay you wanted to know how to help the different schools better right any schools that need more than other schools I think on average the BCC budget covers roughly 50 to 70% of the budgets of the different schools so I think the schools are very grateful to whatever you give little bit little bit to all of them that's for the Orville schools I think Outreach schools get a much smaller amount of budget but they get a lot of budget including school fees that they charge or big donors I think Udavi has some really big donors it could also the donations could go either to all the different schools many of them many of them really need it or alternately it could come to BCC and we could distribute it that's now we're going to review the requests that are still coming in from all of the different services including schools and see how we can increase budgets accordingly or decrease if some services happen to need less does that kind of answer the question thank you my name is Dania again thank you so much for this work what comes to mind for me is that by taking all this data structuring and representing it as you did you allow us to actually understand what's happening you allow for inclusivity and transparency and building trust and I think these are very important needs in the moment in the community the other thing I want to say is because you do this type of work there's an ability for us common citizens to learn and to think and to plan for the future together again I have a few specific questions one is I don't think I saw in the budget anything about research, development and innovation I assume there's a lot of research that goes on in all the sectors and it will be very hard to quantify it but so one of the questions is there an effort to quantify the actual research that's going on in all the different sectors second can we actually set up some platform and you know and Rika already working with that where we have a common sort of like pot for research, development, innovation that can also actually boost the economy that means in social entrepreneurship and so on we suddenly have a windfall of 300 lakhs what can we do with that in terms of boosting the economy based on the right value system that we adhere to I would love to see some brainstorming around that if that is possible the other thing is there's a lot of data that is floating around in the different working groups there's a lot of fragmented data and there's not enough institutional memory in Orville across all the different parts of Orville is there a way to bring that together with the budget again that will help us to all become more educated and integrated as a community and at the same time maybe also save money in certain aspects of our operations and put it to good use somewhere else thank you so I can answer that and then anyone wants to add so SIR has a lot of grants for research so actually there is a large funding source specifically through SIR and people can apply directly there for research grants there's also PCG which also has research grants so there are a lot of other funding sources for research specifically and we do have communications with these entities for example where PCG or increasingly SIR will have had something that started out as a project and that now it's been developed and it's still being developed is there something that now City Services is able to take up so those conversations are ones that we have but where it's really just new research those are the key funding sources because those also have people who are specialized and actually dealing with these requests in terms of your suggestion for actually having a service that brings data together and also for services that do this and then yes, of course we'll look and see what budget can be provided but we can't set up all the services so it's really just about each and every one of us where we see that there's a gap and a need in the community to you know, pin that down, bring it forward find people who are willing to work on it yeah if anyone wants to add anything to that oh, CSR also but there's also obviously the center of scientific research that also gets grants for research and funds that all right, hi Sasha here yes, thank you so much my questions, one was that I saw that the farm, the donations to the farm was really quite low down under sports and culture and many other things and it kind of surprised me because I've always got this idea and I always hear that the farms in Orville are struggling and when it comes to the farms it's food it's one of our essential needs so I just wondered is that budget because that's what they need and that's okay with them or so that was one and my other one wasn't really a question, it was more a reflection of Ananda said here and I think it would be wonderful to to have goals I guess you know, the goal would be that our maintenance in Orville is not connected to a job yeah, that that our basic needs within our community are there and the chance to explore that would be a goal so one thing about the farms of course is that like the farms also have income which is basically not reflected there so it's not just that number for the rest farms are struggling, it's clear the farm sector in Orville is struggling and definitely one of the things one of the reasons why we are here if we think as a community that it is very important to give more money to the farms then actually that could be an outcome of this meeting so that's basically my very short answer about that the other question, what was that it wasn't a question, thank you thank you I just want to reply to the no question basic income for everybody would be yeah we see how we can reach it, we see how we can make it, I think this is the basic idea of Orville but how to make it and how not to fall back in our fear structure and say we need a job to find our means let's work on it, let's go in the direction at least we have now children maintenance for all the childs and we have already for the elders the basic needs is covered if you are elder in Orville and you are here for a lot of years please step forward, ask for help if you need help the middle age how we can cover this now this is part of this budgeting if you say I want to have a maintenance I want to be in 15 places one hour every day or whatever, share it or if you have two places or three places, we will see how we can make the structure if it is a service given to the community we have to find the tools if it ends up in basic income or not, I have no idea but this would be close to my heart and so am I I just want to add one small thing on farms which is that last year even during this 2021 year we were managing expenses we had started a process with the farm group coordination team at the time to look at how we could increase support for farms this is already something that has been ongoing it is one of the only budgets that was increased during the 2021 year we increased maintenance whereas we had frozen the 19-20 level budgets for all of 2021 if you read our previous reports you will see more about that also with the lockdown we had subsidized the food that was not able to be distributed because of closure of solar kitchen, PDDC kitchen and the lockdown so just to say that we are aware and this is something that we had begun engaging with the farm group with farm group coordination team to see what could be established and also to open up the conversation completely and talk about what could if there is a better budget structure for farms what could that be but it is actually a fairly complex topic we found out Lisa right and I think that will be the last question actually it is not a question I am Lisa it is a request thank you very much for this work already and just for my understanding to go a bit further could it be possible to know what is the percentage of money you give to the services for example I know education school received some finance from your side but also from SIR and I don't know the percentage I don't know what are the other resources like in the farm you say there are some income and I just want to know what is the percentage of this if it is possible not for today of course so I will attempt to answer so yeah it is definitely possible but so we need to compartmentalize these different data sources so now so now if you are looking at the education sector specifically then we can begin to look at what is the information required and what is the information that is valuable to the community and so feedback like this is very important to try and understand how we look for data as well right now data is quite scattered in our community so yeah this itself took a lot of time and VCC already had a lot of the data so yeah so definitely that is definitely very possible and in this case it would definitely be something that maybe we can't incorporate in this year's report but in following reports depending on the amount of work for sure yeah and just to say that this is something that two of us really looked into when we were starting to look at the data and look at this report and in the VCC budget requests when people request something they are required to list their other sources of income for the previous year however we had an incomplete data set so that was one issue that we have not been able to provide uniformly for all of these but going forward with this programmer I mentioned Basant we are looking at how we can collect that more easily and I am sorry to end on this note but we also had an issue with some sectors who actually were not willing or comfortable for us to share their other sources of income on this website so there is also those things that we need to look into as a community okay last question thank you I come more from the angle of the income because I mean we talked actually quite a lot quite a lot of the questions were on what we could do with the money, what the community would need type of support in which direction we want to go with support for the community at large because yeah I think Liliana and I are basically yet again the only two unit holders Mark so we are I think the only three unit holders present here and I think that's the very good presentation that you have put together can only, I mean it needs to be shared because I think that this is also very important that we reach more towards the income generating sector I think that one I think there's really a wealth of information and you will get hopefully quite a lot of questions on this presentation because yeah it really opens up the reality of what the BCC and the community faces here one thing I would like to point out is that you have showed us this graph where for basically 10 months of the year things were sort of bumbling along with basically income and expenditure being rather finely balanced and then at the two last years of that financial year it sort of showed up by three calls and one of the reasons you gave was that there was actually quite a lot of past contribution pending from previous years that came in. I think it would be actually quite interesting. I mean I hope BCC knows what that figure is. I think it would be actually really interesting because if we are talking about transparency I think it's also good for the community to realize how much that spike is something that can be repeated even in smaller quantities but what are we talking about here? Is this really just a one-off? Because this and this is now exhausted and what we need to now rely on is just more what we are able to generate plus donations hopefully would still be coming from elsewhere. So there is actually quite a simple answer to that question because the spike at the end was the GOI grant and then the pending contribution we are referring to was the large transfer that was made from PTPS as part of the transition over so there was 1.3 crore that came in in March and that was based on essentially a calculation done between BCC finance and Kala looking at basically if PTPS had been contributing as a commercial unit for the years in which it was generating significant surplus revenue what would that amount add up to and that amount was about 1.3 crore and that amount was transferred by Kala to city services but now he can speak more about the remaining pending contributions. Yeah, as out of the BCC members I'm kind of in charge of the BCC finance section there's Sheda who actually sends the emails but I'm supposed to supervise I do that marginally well I don't know but I know the total pending contributions is somewhere around 2 crore of or something like that or maybe more but a significant amount of that is probably never going to come because it's from units who are systematically struggling and the pending amounts some of them are quite large and their pending since for example 2013 2015 so significantly far enough back that people may not be able to contribute so many of them do many units do contribute yearly whenever we send the request some of them promptly pay whatever is missing many people pay also on time correctly during the year and at the end there's almost no balance so overall it's coming fairly well and the contributions are coming correctly but yeah there is a significant pending some of which will probably never be covered. Okay, thank you all so much for coming and we hope that you'll come again on Tuesday on Tuesday we'll be having a small table format so they one table really on the income there'll be other tables on these various sectors you'll be sitting with a BCC member and a sector representative and going to much more detail into each of these sectors with people who know about them both from the budget side and the services side so if that interests you please join us next Tuesday January 11th, 4.30 it'll be a two hour session thank you