American India Foundation hosts its first Annual Boston Gala

The American India Foundation (AIF), the largest diaspora-led philanthropy focused exclusively on India, is holding its First Annual AIF Boston Gala on Dec 08th, 2007.  Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen will be the keynote speaker while Victor Menezes, Co-Chair of AIF and Gururaj & Jaishree Deshpande have accepted to be the Chairs for this evening's event.   AIF has been active in the Boston area for several years now and has a Leadership Council led by Raj and Nalini Sharma, and comprising of several individuals committed to social change issues in India. 

Since its inception in 2001, AIF has raised over $45 million and invested and partnered with 90 high-quality Indian NGOs who are working on primary education, women’s economic empowerment and HIV/AIDS.  In addition, AIF's Digital Equalizer program has introduced technology to enhance the education of over 550,000 students and through the Service Corps Fellowship, 169 young American professionals have served for ten months with Indian NGOs.

“We are very proud to see that AIF’s work resonates in the hearts and minds of the Indian Diaspora and supporters of India in the corporate sector throughout the United States. AIF’s agenda is not finished.  Our mission to speed development in India is not over. AIF has the power to create a common platform for philanthropic giving among Indian Americans. We will not stop until we bring about greater change in the areas of Education, Livelihood, and Public Health,” said Pradeep Kashyap, Executive Director, American India Foundation.

“AIF is using the leverage of its grants to move state governments in India to invest their resources as well. In the area of education, AIF and its partner Janarth supports nearly 25,000 children—this now has Maharashtra State Government support. The benefits of such government partnerships are clear – they allow more leverage for everyone’s investment, and increase our ability to scale these solutions faster.” Rajat Gupta, Co-Chair, American India Foundation.

In his most recent book “Giving”, President Bill Clinton lauded AIF's work saying that “if groups of successful immigrants organized and acted in the same manner (as AIF), it would help an enormous number of people and show America's best face to the world”.

AIF’s grants to community-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are at the heart of its efforts to accelerate social and economic change in India. AIF achieves maximum impact by taking a focused approach to the numerous challenges facing India. All grants are targeted at improving the lives of the poorest and most marginalized people in India. Through these grants AIF seeks to demonstrate successful methods that can be implemented on a much larger scale.  AIF’s education grants program, for instance, focus 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 finds ways to ensure that such children have access to quality education, and are able to successfully complete the primary and the elementary cycle.

President Bill Clinton serves as AIF’s Honorary Chair, our Directors and Trustees consist of key leaders such as Rajat Gupta, former Managing Director Worldwide of McKinsey & Co. and Frank Wisner, former Ambassador to India.

You can register and buy tickets for the event at http://www.aifoundation.org/events/bostongala07.htm

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