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Introduction: American India foundation
is providing an opportunity for Indian Americans to get a feel of living
in India, finds Ishani Duttagupta
The American India Foundation (AIF)
may have shot into the limelight in 2001 when US President Bill Clinton
travelled to Gujarat, in the wake of the devastating earthquake, with a
group of its trustees. But even beyond the high-profile earthquake relief
and rehabilitation work in Gujarat, AIF is now looking to a broader objective.
While Clinton still remains the honorary chairperson of the foundation,
co-chairs are shared by Rajat Gupta, MD McKinsey & Co and Victor Menezes,
vice chairman of Citibank. The board of trustees list reads like a who's
who of prominent Indian Americans with names like Sabeer Bhatia, founder
of Hotmail, Vikram Chatwal, VP, Hampshire Hotels & Resorts, Swadesh
Chatterjee, president Thermo Brandt instruments, Desh Deshpande, chairman
Sycamore Networks, Rono Dutta, president United Airlines, Vinod Gupta,
chairman InfoUSA, Vinod Khosla, partner Kleiner Perkins, Kumar Malavalli,
founder of Brocade Communications, Dr Kiran Patel, president of AAPI, film-maker
Mira Nair and Mike Patel, past president of AAHOA. In 2001, the donors
fist included Citibank, Indo American Arts Council, Arnold Schwarzenegger
& Maria Shriver, the Gujarati Samaj of NY, McKinsey & Co, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter, TiE, Sequoia Capital, The Boeing Co, Neo Magic Corporation,
Hewlett-Packard and numerous others. In short, AIF has brought together
the most diverse group of individuals and organisations in the US.
But moving beyond just big names, the foundation has launched two interesting programmes for India. The first one Service Corps sends skilled volunteers to India to work with local NGOs while the other Digital Equalizer is designed to bridge the educational divide in India through the use of computers.
“For our Service Corps programme, we advertise in the US and invite applications from candidates with a minimum undergrad degrees. Our advisory board then selects 25 individuals with a wide variety of experience to come and work in India as volunteers. They engage in nine month development projects with our NGO partners here,” says Manisha Shetty, the programme co-ordinator at AIF.
The programme which provides an opportunity to live and work in India and experience the country, is very popular with young people of Indian origin in the US who are looking for an opportunity to engage with their roots. “Out of 19 fellows in 2002-03, 14 are of Indian origin,” says Shetty. 'In fact, some of the people who apply are second or third generation immigrants whose families may have moved to the US from places like Tobago & Trinidad long ago. When we place our fellows in assignments in India we do a careful matching process. Language skills, for instance, are very important, since the projects are field-intensive, with grassroots NGOs working at the local rural and urban levels. We also try to match the work that the volunteers have had experience in doing with the NGO that they will be working with,” she adds. AIF has structured the various projects with NGOs as a process of building bridges between India and the US. “It provides an opportunity for donors and trustees in the US to be exposed to the developmental issues in India. That also makes the process richer in going forward,” says Shankar Venkateswaran, the executive director of AIF in India.
“Working as a fellow of the AIF Service Corps programme is giving the scope to live and work in India for an extended period. On a personal front, this is a rich learning process since earlier trips to India were just short visits,” says Anita Agarwal, who moved to New Jersey with her parents when she was a few months old. She has a bachelors degree in economics and political science and joined the AIF programme after a short stint as technology consultant with Price Waterhouse Coopers. Her project is as micro-finance consultant with the Self Employed Woman's Association (SEWA) in Delhi. 'While earlier visits to India gave me a taste only of the negative sides, this time I have found a lot of positive aspects of living and working in India. In fact, I find that Indians are far more tolerant to other cultures and religions than the Americans. I am really enjoying my work here and have been reading a lot about India to expand my education, “says Agarwal who aspires to go in for an MBA degree after her assignment ends. 'But this experience has helped me to make up my mind about going into developmental work full-time and perhaps coming to India again,” she says. Origin like John Edwards have come from very different backgrounds. “I decided to apply for the fellowship because I lived and worked in Mahattan and was facing a very fast bum-out as an architect with a private practice,” he says. Edwards' grandfather lives in India and he had been visiting every two years. An architect from Temple University with many years of experience in high-end architecture, Edwards is now working with SEEDs a voluntary group of architects, planners and engineers on housing planning and development in earthquake prone areas in India. “The project spans seven states and we are looking at sustainable, indigenous and affordable housing solutions. Our awareness campaigns have been very effective and since I use a lot of audio-visual aids, language has not really been a barrier for me in communicating with villagers. Technical speak which is delivered through drawings and models is not very dependent on local languages,” he says. Of course, the programme also includes fellows like Virginia Sanders a major in ecology and evolutionary biology. Sanders took up the assignment because she wanted to live and work in a developing country. My work experience included two years with Oxfam in Boston. And now my project with the Tamil Nadu Science Forum in Chennai gives me the scope to work with women's health initiatives, she says.
The Digital Equalizer programme
was first launched by volunteers of the service corps in 2001 in Karnataka
as a computer learning initiative. In 2001, AIF kicked off two digital
equalizer centres in Karnataka and received commitments to expand to two
additional centres in Uttaraanchal and two in Maharashtra. “The initiative
is aimed at children who as disadvantaged as far as access to technology
is concerned. It is focussed on using technology as a tool rather than
as an end in itself,” says Venkateswaran. We are also looking at providing
curriculum based software and empowered access to the Internet for both
teachers and students. The project is already running as a pilot in 100-150
schools in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, “ he adds. Digital Equalizer,
which has an equal opportunity to access technology at its core, is run
by AIF itself while the service corps programme is based on partnering
NGOs.
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