WASHINGTON: US philanthropy platform raises over $1 million for 25 Indian NGOs with help of young Indian-Americans.

WASHINGTON: India Philanthropy Alliance (IPA), a coalition of leading India-focused non-profits in the United States, has raised over $1 million for 25 Indian non-government organisations working across health, environment and education in an India Giving Day event in March this year. The event, which is now set to become an annual campaign, highlighted the contributions made by Indian-Americans to India.
For Manisha Bharti, global executive, and CEO of Pratham USA, an organisation that supports millions of children in India through literacy and vocational programmes, the India Giving Day platform was not just an opportunity for the senior members of the Indian-American community to give back to their country of birth but it has also captured the imagination of the second generation of Indian-Americans to connect with social causes in India. “I was born in Canada and I am an American citizen and fit into the profile of the second generation of Indian immigrant. For my parents’ generation, connecting with India and supporting Indian causes was easier. But to take this forward, organisations such as ours need to stay relevant with the new generation. IPA through the India Giving Day event is doing just that – it is a platform that connects the Indian community members with one and another as well as with India,” says Bharti who is a member of the steering committee of India Giving Day. She adds that through her work, she has spent a lot of time living and working in India and has probably notched up more experience on the ground than her parents.

Sejal Desai, co-chair of the steering committee of Indian Giving Day and executive director of the New York-based Akanksha Education Fund, feels that to make an impact, IPA needs to serve as a partnership between its stakeholders and the larger Indian-American community. “This is a platform that while raising over a million dollars is also a part of a movement to make a difference and engage many more people who learn about issues in India. We have several young Indian-Americans serving on our boards and committees and it is the internal mandate of IPA to bring in the voice of young professionals and emerging leaders in different organisational roles,” she said.
For the India Giving Day initiative, several young Indian-Americans volunteered and decided to amplify and embrace causes leading fund raisers, she adds. “Many of our organisations were created by the first generation of Indian immigrants but we are now creating sustainability by engaging the next generation,” Desai says.
Young Indian-Americans Aadi Hetamsaria and his brother Aayan Hetamsaria, students of ninth and seventh grade in Seattle, for instance, connected with Akanksha and visited a school with students from lower income communities in Mumbai, when they travelled to India last December. “We went to the school and met the students there and talked to them about chess. We spent four hours at the school and started giving them chess lessons,” says Aadi. “We have created an online workshop and have been giving them online chess lessons once a week since then,” Aayan, a chess champion, says. The two roped in family members and friends to donate to a fund-raiser, which they organised for India Giving Day.
“The Indian-American community is 4-million strong and the immigrant group with the highest average household earnings and we hope to leverage the success of India Giving Day this year to energise the community in a collective and bigger way to support social issues in India in future,” says Desai.
The India Giving Day leadership team has top Indian-American names including venture capitalist and entrepreneur Desh Deshpande, investor and philanthropist Lata Krishnan, Indiaspora founder MR Rangaswami and philanthropist Sunil Wadhwani.