American India Foundation
Encyclopedia
The American India Foundation (AIF, founded 2001) is a nonprofit American
organization that is devoted to accelerating social and economic change in India
. The AIF has invested in over 100 Indian non-governmental organizations while raising about $50 million since its inception.
It is one of the largest secular, non-partisan American organizations supporting development work in India.
AIF awards grants to education
, livelihood
, and public health
projects in India – with emphases on elementary education, women’s empowerment, and HIV
/AIDS
, respectively. AIF has a program called Digital Equalizer which attempts to bridge the digital divide by providing computers, internet access and training to under-resourced Indian schools. It also funds the Service Corps Fellowship, renamed the William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service to India on May 11, 2009, which sends skilled young Americans to work with NGOs in India for a ten month period. The fellowship helps exchange technical skills, intellectual resources and helps increase the capacity of Indian NGOs to continue their work while giving American leaders a good understanding of India.
The American India Foundation was founded by a group of Indian-Americans responding to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake
. Former United States President Bill Clinton
serves as the Honorary Chair, and has been involved in a number of AIF events; he was asked to get involved with the group by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
in the wake of the earthquake.http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/061702-sp-cf-rr-gn-gl-irq-afg-prk-rwa-bra-sp-wjc-addresses-council-on-foreign-relations.htm
AIF takes a multi-phased approach to disaster relief: relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation. AIF's focus is the long-term rehabilitation of communities, and it dedicates most of its resources to this phase. In Gujarat and Tamil Nadu
, AIF funded organizations in the affected communities for up to three years following the earthquake so that our NGO partners could identify long-term solutions to improve the lives of people affected by disaster.
AIF’s education grants program, therefore, focuses on complementing and supplementing state efforts in meeting the above commitments. It does this by working with partner NGOs that:
In all these groups, the focus is on girl children, and children of ethnic/religious minorities.
Major grants have been awarded to 12 NGO partners in education including Nidan, Janarth, and Bodh
In such geographies, AIF’s emphasis is on improving poor communities, particularly women groups’, with access to and additional control over natural resources, mainly around water and forest. Alternative and sustainable uses of water and forest are promoted in enhancing livelihoods opportunities.
The link between water and development is recognized in the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) which set specific targets for water: By 2015, the population which has no sustainable access to safe water resources must be halved.
AIF partners’ efforts are largely directed towards community mobilization, forming women’s self-help groups, and strengthening community-based institutional arrangements. This will ensure the sustainability of these institutions, proactively resolve the competing resource-use conflicts, and bring women's perspectives to the top of the priority list. Particular attention is given to encourage dialogue to resolve contentious issues, allow women to make key decisions and choices, and lay dawn transparent resolution strategies and mechanisms to address conflict resolution. Systematically documenting community watershed works with an objective to learn from different situations - especially on conflict resolution and gender - and influencing the larger discourse and public policy, are of highest priority for AIF.
AIF’s approach is to link the urban poor and migrants with various types of self-employment and wage employment opportunities that are emerging in an urban informal sector economy, by taking full advantage of a growing economy, mainly around the growing services, manufacturing and construction sectors. This is accomplished by AIF partners mainly by forming collectives, promoting saving and credit groups, exposure and training on employable skills, linking them up with markets, and promoting group enterprises. Forming groups or collectives of urban poor enable them to better negotiate their terms of engagement. Some of the urban poor who have been mobilized for livelihood enhancement are construction workers, rickshaw pullers, home managers, rag pickers and sweepers, etc.
The twin emphasis will be on accelerating health literacy, particularly about preventable and infectious diseases, and strengthening health systems for delivery of quality services.
AIF’s interventions will bring private sector resources and ingenuity to drive public health changes for saving lives, particularly those of women and children. Specifically, these investments will:
To begin with, the program will be implemented in under-served districts of Bihar
, Jharkhand
, Uttar Pradesh
, Orissa
and Madhya Pradesh
, and in peri-urban and urban slums attached to Delhi
and Mumbai
. The program delivery will be chiefly through:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
organization that is devoted to accelerating social and economic change in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The AIF has invested in over 100 Indian non-governmental organizations while raising about $50 million since its inception.
It is one of the largest secular, non-partisan American organizations supporting development work in India.
AIF awards grants to education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, livelihood
Livelihood
A person's livelihood referers to "means of securing the necessities of life". For instance a fisherman's livelihood depends on the availability and accessibility of fish.- In social sciences :...
, and public health
Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
projects in India – with emphases on elementary education, women’s empowerment, and HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
/AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, respectively. AIF has a program called Digital Equalizer which attempts to bridge the digital divide by providing computers, internet access and training to under-resourced Indian schools. It also funds the Service Corps Fellowship, renamed the William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service to India on May 11, 2009, which sends skilled young Americans to work with NGOs in India for a ten month period. The fellowship helps exchange technical skills, intellectual resources and helps increase the capacity of Indian NGOs to continue their work while giving American leaders a good understanding of India.
The American India Foundation was founded by a group of Indian-Americans responding to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake
2001 Gujarat earthquake
The 2001 Gujarat earthquake occurred on January 26, 2001, India's 52nd Republic Day, at 08:46 AM local time and lasted for over two minutes. The epicentre was about 9 km south-southwest of the village of Chobari in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District of Gujarat, India...
. Former United States President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
serves as the Honorary Chair, and has been involved in a number of AIF events; he was asked to get involved with the group by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Atal Bihari Vajpayee is an Indian statesman who served as the tenth Prime Minister of India three times – first for a brief term of 13 days in 1996, and then for two terms from 1998 to 2004. After his first brief period as Prime Minister in 1996, Vajpayee headed a coalition government from...
in the wake of the earthquake.http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/061702-sp-cf-rr-gn-gl-irq-afg-prk-rwa-bra-sp-wjc-addresses-council-on-foreign-relations.htm
AIF's Emergency Response
In cases of major national disasters in India, AIF has been involved in relief and rehabilitation efforts. It has undertaken three campaigns for relief and rehabilitation:- In 2001, after the Gujarat Earthquake
- In 2004, after the Tsunami
- In 2005, after the Kashmir Earthquake
AIF takes a multi-phased approach to disaster relief: relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation. AIF's focus is the long-term rehabilitation of communities, and it dedicates most of its resources to this phase. In Gujarat and Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
, AIF funded organizations in the affected communities for up to three years following the earthquake so that our NGO partners could identify long-term solutions to improve the lives of people affected by disaster.
Strategy
AIF’s approach to grant making in the area of elementary education is premised on the following:- It is the state’s responsibility to fulfill its constitutional mandate of free and compulsory education for all children between 6 and 14 years of age.
- The government has committed itself to the Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) by 2010.
AIF’s education grants program, therefore, focuses on complementing and supplementing state efforts in meeting the above commitments. It does this by working with partner NGOs that:
- Focus on the “left-out children” and find ways to ensure that such children have access to quality education, and are able to successfully complete the primary and the elementary cycle. AIF works with the following categories of children who are excluded due to a complex combination of physical and social reasons:
- children of seasonal migrants
- deprived urban children
- children of sex workers
- children with disabilities
- children living with HIV/AIDS
In all these groups, the focus is on girl children, and children of ethnic/religious minorities.
- Work on improving the quality of education, and strengthening government schools.
Major grants have been awarded to 12 NGO partners in education including Nidan, Janarth, and Bodh
Strategy
AIF's focus is to enhance the livelihoods of poor and marginalized communities in rural and urban areas with a particular emphasis on promoting empowered and dignified livelihoods for women, youth, disabled and people living with HIV & AIDS. Broadly, the AIF livelihood strategy is organized around two sub-sectors—rural livelihoods and urban livelihoods--- with micro finance as a cross-cutting theme in both contexts.Rural Livelihood & Microfinance
In rural areas, AIF concentrates on those geographies and constituencies that are characterized by being chronically drought-prone, undulating topography, an acute degradation of natural resources, semi-arid climatic conditions and afflicted by shortages of drinking water. In these places, even in years of adequate rainfall, crop distress is caused by the gaps in the rain at critical points of time in the crop growth cycle.In such geographies, AIF’s emphasis is on improving poor communities, particularly women groups’, with access to and additional control over natural resources, mainly around water and forest. Alternative and sustainable uses of water and forest are promoted in enhancing livelihoods opportunities.
The link between water and development is recognized in the Millennium Development Goals
Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015...
(MDGs) which set specific targets for water: By 2015, the population which has no sustainable access to safe water resources must be halved.
AIF partners’ efforts are largely directed towards community mobilization, forming women’s self-help groups, and strengthening community-based institutional arrangements. This will ensure the sustainability of these institutions, proactively resolve the competing resource-use conflicts, and bring women's perspectives to the top of the priority list. Particular attention is given to encourage dialogue to resolve contentious issues, allow women to make key decisions and choices, and lay dawn transparent resolution strategies and mechanisms to address conflict resolution. Systematically documenting community watershed works with an objective to learn from different situations - especially on conflict resolution and gender - and influencing the larger discourse and public policy, are of highest priority for AIF.
Urban Livelihood & Microfinance
In urban areas, AIF’s work priorities go beyond large metro cities, i.e. focus on medium and small towns from poorer states in northern and eastern India. Urban population growth is much higher than the rate of overall population growth, and currently an estimated 29% of India’s population live in urban areas.AIF’s approach is to link the urban poor and migrants with various types of self-employment and wage employment opportunities that are emerging in an urban informal sector economy, by taking full advantage of a growing economy, mainly around the growing services, manufacturing and construction sectors. This is accomplished by AIF partners mainly by forming collectives, promoting saving and credit groups, exposure and training on employable skills, linking them up with markets, and promoting group enterprises. Forming groups or collectives of urban poor enable them to better negotiate their terms of engagement. Some of the urban poor who have been mobilized for livelihood enhancement are construction workers, rickshaw pullers, home managers, rag pickers and sweepers, etc.
Strategy
Guided by national priorities, AIF is rolling out a new generation of programs under its Public Health portfolio, with a focus on building community investment and ownership. The goal of the program is to reduce mortality and the burden of disease in impoverished and under-served communities by promoting and protecting healthy lifestyles.The twin emphasis will be on accelerating health literacy, particularly about preventable and infectious diseases, and strengthening health systems for delivery of quality services.
AIF’s interventions will bring private sector resources and ingenuity to drive public health changes for saving lives, particularly those of women and children. Specifically, these investments will:
- Promote women’s rights and well being using a life cycle approach: reproductive health and maternal health will be central to AIF’s interventions;
- Protect child survival and well being using a service delivery model to assure quality care by family or community, and engender responsive and accountable public services.
To begin with, the program will be implemented in under-served districts of Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
, Jharkhand
Jharkhand
Jharkhand is a state in eastern India. It was carved out of the southern part of Bihar on 15 November 2000. Jharkhand shares its border with the states of Bihar to the north, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the west, Orissa to the south, and West Bengal to the east...
, Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
, Orissa
Orissa
Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...
and Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....
, and in peri-urban and urban slums attached to Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
and Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
. The program delivery will be chiefly through:
- Clinics with focused diagnostic and limited curative services to meet reproductive and maternal/child health needs, and referral connectivity with government hospitals, in high density under-served areas.
- Community radio stations spanning 5 northern belt states to accelerate health literacy and secure accountable public health services for illiterate migrants.
- Campaign to invest in the girl child to end fetal selection and son preference, and to protect survival and growth of girls.
- Link in with existing micro-savings and lending schemes to ascertain best in practice initiatives.
- Outreach to 5 districts in 2 states with high levels of infant/child mortality and 1 district with large numbers of infected and affected children.
- Integrated primary care: nutrition education & fortification sachets, immunization, and preventing water borne infections, and life cycle skills.