| AID-India Conference 99, Chennai |
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| Introduction to Association for India’s Development (AID) | ||||
| Shrinaath Chidambaram | ||||
| IN FALL OF 1991, AID was conceived and started by a group of
students in the University of Maryland, the prime mover of which was Ravi.
In those days, there was a lot of talk about doing something to solve India’s
problems, but it was just talk, or maybe raising slogans like Kashmir should
belong to India or something like that without any meaningful action.
But this group of 10 people in University of Maryland came together and asked exactly what they can do, even if it is just for one village. They worked a plan on something, like adopting one village. In some sense that was the origin of our long term vision of working in villages. Even a student, a graduate student who gets a monthly fellowship of $1000 can easily save $10 or $20 to contribute to such a cause. We inspired a lot of students, particularly in the University of Maryland. The idea caught on quickly in the Indian community of Washington DC area, where the contributions were sometimes higher. Students did the bulk of the volunteer work in the early stages – mainly trying to identify projects, establish contacts with organizations in India which were doing developmental work in different areas. BCT was one of the early projects we supported. Slowly we diversified and started thinking about other issues. Now that we established the process of collecting money, what else should we try and do, how should our projects be? Is it enough if we give it to a charity organization or are there some “good” charity organizations, some with a better vision of development than others. Then we slowly started to develop a set of project review criteria and processes, how organizations should involve people in their decision making, and in conceiving and implementing projects. As far as reaching out to Indian community in the US – we did a few innovative things – first we designed a T shirt (asks Sudhakar to stand up and model). This T shirt was a big success in the DC area. We sold a lot of T shirts and spread awareness on what AID was trying to do. Shortly following that we organized a cultural program – India Beckons. We found that the only exposure American born Indians were getting is through film and though they are very talented they would just imitate film songs. We thought, stage is a medium we can use very effectively– so we thought of putting on a thematic program. There was skepticism, whether we can advance culture for a cause, whether this would appeal to the audience. In our minds it was clear that this was just part of our culture, it was not as if we were doing culture separately and doing AID separately. For example we had a project in candle making in Pune, and one of the dances involved candles. We had a skit, “What is India’s Biggest Problem” – and it wasn’t population as everybody in the skit said, but inaction as we were all only saying things. The program was a resounding success. House was packed, people appreciated it very much. At the end we had a sign up sheet, people left their names, addresses, what they would like to do for AID. The next program had a strong pledge drive. We present what AID is doing and at the end ask for an actual show of commitment, of both time and money. In an audience of about 400 people about 40 people actually promise to do something and we start seeing their faces. That is one way we started establishing our presence in the community. There are other organizations in the US which organize cultural programs like Divali or Holi. We used to go to these programs with charts, pictures, etc about AID. We would stand there at a table and talk to the people who came there. Where we used to sit passively we now started going and talking to people, and found out that most people were interested in doing something like this. They just were not sure how to go about it, whether the money would go to the right organisation, etc. Once we built the mechanism to identify good organizations, we were tapping a lot of this interest among people. That has helped us build a very strong grassroots base. AID believes in primarily raising its funds in small amounts from individuals who believe that they can do something about it, rather than writing for grants –which we might do later but our strength lies in grassroots awareness. People feel that they want to be part of AID and only then contribute funds. Soon after, we caught up with the technology revolution, got a web page. Balaji sent e-mail to some of his friends in other parts of the US and soon we had other chapters in about 10 places. Later we decided we should have a plan on how our organization should go forward. The essential thing was that the efforts of these chapters should be coordinated, we should have a common vision, which covers the entire length and breadth of India. Also in each village we should have a very involved, depth of development. Development is not only related to the villagers, but is about our own development. We also have to think of ways we can change. We also focussed on how we are also part of the problems, not necessarily the problem solvers. Latest in the trend has been people returning to India full time to work for AID. There have been so far three people… Ravi, Balaji and Aravinda. Through them and through establishment of chapters now in India, we hope there will be a strong linkage between AID in India, and US and other organisations which are doing developmental work in India. We can certainly work towards a grassroots movement where people realise that we can do something about all the problems facing us. There will be more detailed discussions of the AID-Plan in later sessions. But I can take some short questions.
Ravi: Shrinaath talked mainly about fundraising and the initial set up of AID. As AID grew very quickly, volunteerism was very important. Raising funds in the US is not an easy task, especially for grad students of Indian origin. What that demanded was that a lot of students and working people join in a big way and put in a lot of time. You will be amazed to learn that AID now has about 100 people who work entire weekends and evenings not only in raising funds but studying projects and interacting with social workers. A wide spectrum of people have visited AID and we have kept in touch with them, like Medha Patkar, the journalist Sainath, the environmentalist Hiremath. Also visiting projects – for example Shrinaath is now in India for 3 weeks and has spent a week in visiting projects in villages. Sudhakar and Kiran came to India 3 days ago, spent one day with their families and are back here today for the conference. A lot of volunteerism and a lot of ownership of India’s problems has come up. Shrinaath: Sudhakar and Kiran will later talk about AID US and what the volunteers there actually do. |
| There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis,
then you've made a measurement.
If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. Fermi |