American India Foundation
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| Founded | 2001 |
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| Founder | President Bill Clinton, Lata Krishnan, Rajat Gupta, Victor Menezes |
| Type | Charitable trust |
| Focus | Education, Livelihood, Public Health |
| Location |
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Area served
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India |
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Key people
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Lata Krishnan (Chair) Pradeep Kashyap (Vice Chair) M.A. Ravi Kumar (CEO) Dr. Hemanth Paul (India Country Director) |
| Website | AIF.org |
The American India Foundation (AIF, founded 2001) is a nonprofit American organization that is devoted to accelerating social and economic change in India. The AIF has partnered with 227 of India’s NGOs to build a trusted network for implementation, scale, and sustainability while raising over $84 million since its inception. It is one of the largest secular, non-partisan American organizations supporting development work in India.
AIF awards grants to education, livelihood, and public health projects in India – with emphases on elementary education, women’s empowerment, and HIV/AIDS, respectively. AIF has a program called Digital Equalizer which attempts to bridge the digital divide by providing computers, internet access and training to under-resourced Indian schools. It also funds the Service Corps Fellowship, renamed the William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service to India on May 11, 2009, which sends skilled young Americans to work with NGOs in India for a ten-month period. The fellowship helps exchange technical skills, intellectual resources and helps increase the capacity of Indian NGOs to continue their work while giving American leaders a good understanding of India.
The American India Foundation was founded by a group of Indian-Americans responding to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Former United States President Bill Clinton serves as the Honorary Chair, and has been involved in a number of AIF events; he was asked to get involved with the group by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the wake of the earthquake.
In cases of major national disasters in India, AIF has been involved in relief and rehabilitation efforts. It has undertaken three campaigns for relief and rehabilitation:
AIF takes a multi-phased approach to disaster relief: relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation. AIF's focus is the long-term rehabilitation of communities, and it dedicates most of its resources to this phase. In Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, AIF funded organizations in affected communities for up to three years following the earthquake so that NGO partners could identify long-term solutions to improve the lives of people affected by disaster.
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