AMERICAN INDIA FOUNDATION

AIF aims to contribute to building an India, where all people can gain access to affordable education, health care and livelihood opportunities, and where all Indians can realize their full potential. AIF engages, informs, and inspires those passionate about India by building a trusted bridge, and secures a channel for philanthropic funding from the United States and other regions across the world, and its effective investment in the most innovative and scalable projects in India. AIF’s focus on community engagement, emphasizing our commitment towards ensuring sustainable development in India. Our programs create venues for affordable education, healthcare, livelihood opportunities, and leadership development with the support received from community members, institutional and government agencies, and the private sector.

1. Education

1.a. Digital Equalizer: Through the Digital Equalizer program, AIF transforms under-resourced schools into dynamic places to teach and learn through collaborative, project-based learning (SDG 4) by utilizing technology to bridge the educational and digital divide in India.
1.b. Learning and Migration Program (LAMP): AIF’s Learning and Migration Program (LAMP) provides access to quality education opportunities to children in areas of seasonal migration (SDG 4), while also advocating to communities and governments the universal right to education.

2. Livelihoods

2.a. Ability Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE): By training Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), AIF’s Ability-Based Livelihoods Empowerment (ABLE) program facilitates their entry into the job market (SDG 8) through advocacy, and promotes inclusive growth in India (SDG 10).
2.b. Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST): Nourishing the vast potential of India’s youth, AIF’s Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST) program provides underprivileged youth with skills training and access to formal employment opportunities.
2.c. Project Entre-prerana: AIF’s Project Entre-prerana is a systemic transformation intervention aimed at reviving the livelihoods of 1 million street vendors, micro entrepreneurs in India, all of whom have been badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

3. Public Health: AIF’s Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) program utilizes a public-private partnership model to reduce maternal and child mortality in rural and impoverished areas in India. Covering the states of Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Odisha in India, MANSI empowers local communities to care for their mothers and children, while improving the local health systems by providing resources and support.

4. Leadership Development: The AIF Banyan Impact Fellowship provides a platform to young American and Indian professionals to develop their skills, resources and the network needed to become the next generation of leaders with a social conscience. The Fellowship creates a community of socially engaged, global citizens, who represent the leaders of tomorrow.

Since 2001, AIF has impacted the lives of 6.7 million people, across 26 states with support of 330 partners including institutional and government agencies, and private sector. AIF's programs deliver sustainable and scale-able solutions in the fields of health, education, and livelihoods to empower underprivileged children, women and men in India. AIF ensures to uphold principles of secularism, transparency, and accountability in all of our activities by focusing on:

1) Designing programs based on evidence, need and effective approaches, AIF and its teams continue to make efforts to understand communities’ needs and aspirations, and use approaches that have shown to be effective.
2) Monitoring the programs by making mid-course corrections, if required.
3) Field trials of innovations
4) Documenting the program so that the communities can learn, and also evaluating as to what could be done better, and how the program can be made more cost-effective,
5) Contributing towards knowledge management such as new programmatic approaches, new knowledge.
6) Expanding partnerships with existing and prospective partners, considering that low-cost solutions come from partners, and so does sustainability
7) Using advocacy to distribute knowledge gathered to help the development sector in becoming for efficient and effective.
8) Building capacities of key stakeholders and service providers through content development, training the trainers, partners’ meet, industry exposure, sharing of best practices, technical support etc.
9) Proving support services such as financing, institution building, platform building, marketing, up-skilling and entrepreneurship.

With offices in New York and California, twelve chapters across the U.S., and India operations headquartered in New Delhi, AIF is transforming lives across 26 states of India, while addressing development issues on a regional, country, and international scale.
AIF’s programs are aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a framework for collaboration between the profit and the non-profit sectors with complementary capabilities. Delivering sustainable and scale-able solutions in the fields of health, education, and livelihoods; our teams work hard to reach some of the remotest geographies in India.

1. Diverse backgrounds and vast experiences of the AIF board members, and the teams from US and India: The genesis of American India Foundation (AIF) lies in the leadership demonstrated by corporate leaders and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in the USA, in response to a call by the former US President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake in 2001. Resources and support were mobilized quickly, primarily led by the business leaders of Indian origin, for relief and rehabilitation of the Gujarat earthquake victims. Since then AIF has been guided by humanitarian values coupled with corporate principles of trust, transparency and efficiency and has gone on to benefit not just from the support of US-based Corporate leaders of Indian origin but also from India-based business leaders as well business leaders of non-Indian origin too. AIF is further supported by a diverse team of program leaders and team members, who implement various programs to empower underprivileged children, women and men in India. (https://aif.org/about/people/)

2. Learnings gathered and quality outcomes achieved over the last 20 years: Delivering sustainable and scale-able solutions in the fields of health, education, and livelihoods, AIF has impacted the lives of 6.7 million people, across 26 states with support of 330 partners. We ensure to incorporated the learnings gathered over the last 20 years, to implement high impact interventions in education, livelihoods, public health and leadership development. https://aif.org/our-work/

3. Diverse Partnerships: AIF understands that cross-cutting partnerships are crucial to mobilize communities for large-scale change. Poverty is complex, and poor families and individuals face many challenges that are interwoven and manifold. For this reason, partnerships that work across AIF’s thematic areas of education, public health and livelihoods are especially essential for sustainable impact. Since the obstacles AIF seeks to overcome are systemic, multi-dimensional and challenging, multi-year, partnerships are vital for achieving the desired impact.

Since 2001, AIF has impacted the lives of 6.7 million people, across 26 states with support of 330 partners including community members, institutional and government agencies, and the private sector.

1. Education:

1.a. Digital Equalizer: Since its inception, Digital Equalizer has empowered 4,126,691 students with interactive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning experiences, trained 152,644 teachers in STEM and technology focused pedagogy, and transformed 15,056 schools through innovative teaching and learning practices across 15 states in India.
1.b. Learning and Migration Program (LAMP): Through LAMP, AIF has impacted 583, 877 children with quality education across 2279 villages impacted by migration in 13 states of India. Since its inception in 2004, LAMP has trained more than 63,337 community members on various aspects of the RTE Act such as norms, roles and responsibilities of SMC members, and preparing School Development Plans (SDPs).

2. Livelihoods:

2.a. Ability-Based Livelihoods Empowerment (ABLE): ABLE has trained 16,167 Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in workplace readiness and industry skills, and created 9730 jobs for PwDs.
2.b. Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST): Through its MAST program, AIF has trained 124,673 disadvantaged young people in workplace readiness and industry skills, created 92,945 jobs across retail, IT, hospitality, electrical, automotive, and other industries.

3. Public Health:
Through Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) program has treated 133,932 newborns, served 171,897 pregnant women and trained 2940 ASHAs (Community Health Workers) in 3,389 villages from Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Odisha.

4. AIF Banyan Impact Fellowship Program in India: Since the first cohort who assisted in the post-earthquake rehabilitation of Gujarat in 2001, the AIF Clinton Fellowship Program has successfully paired 490 Fellows in service with 214 host organizations across 25 States, thus representing a collective force and organized network dedicated to social change in India.

5. Covid-19 Response- AIF was one of the first non-profits to provide support to the most vulnerable communities in India. The measures provided include critical life-saving medical equipment, PPEs for frontline health workers, hygiene kits for ASHAs and Anganwadi workers, and ration kits for the needy and elderly, including migrants who lost their livelihoods due to lockdown. Team AIF served more than 500,000 underprivileged people with Covid relief. AIF is now transitioning from relief work to rehabilitation of those badly affected by the pandemic.