AID

Hey All !

Hope everyone is in good spirits ! I do not want to spam your emails, so thought of sharing my views on this blog. Thanks for the idea !

The discussion which started as contribution towards wedding gifts turned into a serious topic of donating to the community. It's good.

Coming to the point directly....

Here in USA, I work for Association for India's Development (AID, www.aidindia.org ). Let me explain the way it works. We collect funds here by organizing fund raiser events and send the money back to developmental projects in India. Out of a pool of projects available, we identify 2-3 needy projects based on the social impact of project, beneficiaries, the expenses they are going to incur on the project. Believe me.. we discuss these for hours together and I know the effort it goes into raising funds. We make sure that the money is going into the right hands and we rely mostly on NGOs for the purpose.

Other organizations like CRY, ASHA, SMILE foundation etc also work in the same way in USA. Just that I work for AID and I know the processes here. These are AID chapters in India: Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi. I do not know of other branches. We being in a different country, cannot do anything directly except for raising funds, but you can do...

I am not sure if our plan of setting up a fund consolidates, but if anyone is interested in charity, you can volunteer by yourself. I can give you more details regarding AID if you want. Whatever organization you choose, please be consistent and diligent as the meetings can turn out into steaming hot discussions sometimes or ultra boring sometimes.

If this post looks like a ridiculous advertisement, please ignore it!

Otherwise, comments/views are most welcome!

Thanks,

Swathi