Constitution

Amendments

• Amendment 1, for new chapter requirements. Adopted on July 30^th, 2002.

Name and Purpose

1. The name of this organization shall be `Friends of Young Minds' (hereafter referred to as FOYM).
2. The purpose of FOYM shall be to identify and implement strategies to make children from financially handicapped regions of the world have access to `fun' education. FOYM shall try to provide the stimulus in young minds so that they can be sufficiently self-motivated thereafter.
3. The individual strategies shall change as required. The current strategy shall be to organize a network to collect old computers (PCs) from individuals and companies and make them available for use by children in the poor regions of the world.
4. FOYM shall try to help by transfer of equipment, such as computers, rather than monetary contributions. Keeping monetary issues to a minimum shall be a prime motive. There shall be no expenditure made on administrative work.

Membership

1. Membership shall be open to any member of the Rice community. Other individuals, such as members of the Houston community, shall be permitted to become honorary members, but at least one-half of the full membership must consist of Rice students.
2. The members who are Rice students / alumni (living in Houston) shall be hereafter referred to as the `core-group' and the members of the Houston community shall be referred to as the `support-group'.
3. The organization shall be based entirely on voluntary help from both the core-group and the support-group members.
4. A token (one-time) membership fee of $1.00 shall be due from every member upon joining the organization.
5. Student members leaving Houston shall be automatically terminated from membership in the `core-group'. They may continue to be `support-group' members.

Administration

1. FOYM shall try to avoid a hierarchy among its members. Thus there shall not be any President or Secretary in this organization. There shall be a Treasurer who shall be officially responsible for coordinating the financial aspects of the organization, including receiving donations and writing checks for shipping expenses.
2. Most of the administrative work shall be executed by the core-group. The core-group shall seek assistance from the support group on a need-by-need basis. The support group shall also work on an informal, non-hierarchal structure.
3. There shall be various other coordinators whose roles and duties shall change as required to solve a particular problem. Specifically there shall be coordinators for collecting/receiving equipment, delivering equipment to shipping agencies, keeping well-wishers/benefactors updated on the activities of the group, writing tax-return (once a year) and organizing activities to `recruit' new members. Each member shall have the chance to work on more than one activity if he/she so desires. However, FOYM shall not promote the idea of relying heavily on a few people.
4. Decisions shall be taken by unanimous agreement from all the members participating in a decision process. FOYM shall try to avoid the concept of voting by majority. All participating members at a certain meeting/electronic response etc., must have unanimous agreement on the relevant issue in question in order for it to be accepted.
5. Any member may be impeached upon unanimous agreement by all the remaining members of FOYM. However, the reason for impeachment shall have to be some action(s) that are considered seriously detrimental to the working of the organization.
6. Any issue not addressed explicitly in the constitution shall be decided at the discretion of the core-group members by unanimous agreement.

Disbursement of Funds

All disbursements shall be at the discretion of the Treasurer unless monies have been ordered paid or withheld by a unanimous vote from the remaining participating members of the `core-group'.

Faculty Sponsor

The faculty sponsor shall be chosen from among the full-time members of the Rice University staff. The selection shall be based upon the candidate's concern for educating young children and interest in helping FOYM.

Amendments

Amendments shall be considered for reasons of efficiency of FOYM's activities. This constitution may be amended upon a unanimous vote by all participating core-group members. A minimum strength of ten core-group members must be present in a meeting for amending this constitution.

Ratification

This constitution shall be considered ratified and in effect upon a unanimous agreement by the participating core-group members.

We the under-signed, as core-group members of Friends of Young Minds do hereby affirm that this constitution was ratified by unanimous agreement by all members.