Association for India’s Development (AID) organized its annual conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) over the Memorial Day weekend of May 28th to May 30th, 2011. The conference was attended by more than 150 people, from 27 locations (chapters) across the United States, as well as several full-time workers and partners from India. The conference featured talks by two of AID’s partners working in the areas of health and community empowerment, respectively. Conference attendees also had the opportunity to learn about the 20 year history of AID’s activities and to discuss future work in the areas of projects, campaigns, and volunteer capacity building.

The first day featured a keynote address by Praful Chandel, a senior Village Coordinator working for AID’s partner health organization Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), situated in the Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh, India. JSS was established in 1996 by a group of doctors from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Dehli. JSS works on the implementation of several healthcare initiatives in Bilaspur by operating a health clinic in the village of Ganiyari. Praful presented his experience as a community-level health worker, taking the audience back to 1999, before even the JSS clinic had been set up. Praful and his colleagues would travel by scooter, on badly constructed roads, to reach the remotest parts of the villages, learning about and tending to the ailments of the poor. From then until now, JSS has built up a network of village health workers in 53 villages. Faced with the problem that most of the health workers were semi-literate or illiterate, JSS developed innovative training material that used pictures to help health workers identify and match symptoms and medicines to the corresponding diseases or illnesses. JSS also started weekly mobile clinics for those who found it difficult to travel to the clinic in Ganiyari. Praful also spent some time talking about JSS’s malaria control program in Bilaspur, which has faced malaria epidemics every year. Over time, they developed a “M3” approach of distributing mosquito nets, machli (Hindi word for “fish”, referring to the mosquito-larvae eating fish), and mosquito-repellent oil, that helped control the spread of malaria considerably. It is worth noting that all this work by JSS was done in the absence of any action by the government appointed District Malaria Officer (DMO).

The keynote speech was followed by a “blast from the past” talk by founder Ravi Kuchimanchi and fellow Jeevansaathi (full-time worker) Kiran Vissa, who took the conference attendees on a nostalgic ride back to 20 years ago, when the idea of AID was born, in the University of Maryland, College Park, where Ravi was a doctoral student. What was then just a group of five volunteers, has now grown to over 36 chapters with more than 1000 volunteers in the US. Last year, AID provided grant support of close to $1.2 million for several socio-economic development projects in India. AID operates on the idea that development problems are interconnected, and so should be the solutions. As the issues of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment reinforce one another, any solution must address all these issues.

Conference attendees were then led through a Media workshop by award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shri Prakash, who has documented the damaging health effects of uranium mining on tribal communities inhabiting the area of Jadugoda in Bihar, India. As part of the workshop, several groups of AID volunteers put together their own 5-minute documentaries on issues ranging from AID’s campaigns in Chhattisgarh and Bhopal, to gender related issues in socio-economic development.

In the spirit of sustainability and social responsibility, most of the food for the conference was catered from Red Lentil, which uses organic and locally available ingredients. To minimize waste, attendees even brought their own plates and cutlery, a tradition that has been followed since the 2001 AID conference. Day one closed with fun and festivities as the AID-Boston chapter presented a short satirical play highlighting government led displacement of tribal and rural communities in the name of development.

The second day began with a keynote address by Gandhian human-rights activist, Himanshu Kumar, who established the Vanavasi Chetana Ashram (VCA) 17 years ago in Chhattisgarh, India. Himanshu detailed VCA’s efforts aimed at providing the tribal populations of the area with healthcare services, empowering them to vote and to learn about their rights, and supporting poor communities forcibly and illegally displaced by mining companies in their area. He also noted that he was forced to leave Chhattisgarh, when the state authorities, taking exception to his efforts, demolished the VCA office in 2009.

Jeevansaathi Rachna Dhingra, who leads support efforts in Bhopal, India, for the 1984 gas tragedy victims, and Jayaram Venkatesan, the newest Jeevansaathi, who focuses on education and agricultural projects in the state of Tamil Nadu, India also addressed conference attendees.

On the last day of the conference, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and share experiences with the entire panel of Jeevansaathis. When asked about his first AID conference experience, Vinay Bhat from AID-Boston chapter, shared, “Being part of the AID conference has been an absolutely eye opening experience, seeing how the organization has tirelessly worked for the marginalized in India over the last 20 years. Meeting volunteers and grassroots workers from across the spectrum was a pilgrimage of sorts.”

AID is a volunteer movement promoting sustainable, equitable and just development. AID is comprised of over 1000 volunteers spanning 36 chapters within the USA. AID supports grassroots organizations in India and initiates efforts in various interconnected spheres such as agriculture, energy, education, health, livelihoods, natural resources management, women's empowerment and social justice.

The AID-Boston chapter meets every week on Sundays at the Harvard Science Center and invites new volunteers to join the group and help it take on new engagements. Learn more at www.aidboston.org

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