Newsroom
AIF hosts Spring Awards Gala
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Kavya Rajan
kavya@aifoundation.org / (646) 530-8964
American India Foundation hosts Spring Awards Gala
Celebrating Five Years of AIF
Honorees: Charles R. Kaye, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Anshu Jain
New York (AIF), April 10, 2006 – The American India Foundation (AIF) is hosting its annual Spring Awards Gala on Friday, May 19, 2006 at the Grand Hyatt New York to raise funds for its three pillars of development work in India: Education, Livelihood and Public Health. The Gala will celebrate AIF’s five years of accomplishment towards social and economic development in India.
“When I started with AIF in April 2001,” says Pradeep Kashyap, Executive-Director of AIF, “the only resource I had was my personal cell phone! Today, five years later, we have built ourselves up to 40 core staff in the US and India, with offices in California, New York, Delhi and Bangalore. We have invested roughly $27 million in India. AIF has awarded grants to 60 high-quality Indian NGOs, sent 100 Service Corps Fellows in six batches, and the Digital Equalizer program has brought technology to touch the lives of 85,000 students and 6,000 teachers in schools across India. I think it is fair to say we have accomplished quite a lot in 5 years.”
“In our work we have purposefully targeted some of the most marginalized Indians, who tend to be economically distressed migrants,” continues Kashyap. “Thus, the issue of migration has become the central theme in our grantmaking. AIF is funded largely by the Indian Diaspora community, who themselves, in a way, are migrants in the US. The obvious difference, however, is that our counterparts in India are struggling for the most basic survival, while we Indian-Americans have all the opportunities and resources this country has provided us. It makes perfect sense to me, both personally and professionally, to feel a special responsibility towards migrants in India.”
The Gala program will offer an exciting mélange of events and entertainment: a cocktail reception, awards ceremony, dinner, dancing and a musical concert by the legendary diva of pop music, Usha Uthup. The Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening will be Maura Moynihan, writer, artist and Indophile.
The awards ceremony will recognize three individuals for their philanthropy and leadership: Charles R. Kaye, Co-President of Warburg, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Group Managing Director of Bharti Enterprises, and Anshu Jain, Head of Global Markets at Deutsche Bank.
The Gala Chair will be shared by three couples: Nathalie and William Comfort, Richard Holbrooke and Kati Marton, and Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon. Co-Chairs of the Gala include a number of luminary figures from the corporate and philanthropic worlds, including Sir Evelyn & Lady de Rothschild, Henry M. Paulson, Jr, Chairman and CEO of Goldman, Sachs & Co., Sy Sternberg, Chairman and CEO of New York Life Insurance Company, and Charles Prince, Chairman and CEO of Citigroup.
Past guests of AIF Galas have included Hillary Clinton, Deepak Chopra, Richard Gere, Gloria Steinem, Anand Mahindra and A.R. Rahman. Other high-profile guests are expected again this year.
Individual tickets start at $500; tables start at $5,000. AIF’s goal for the evening is to exceed the $1.1 million raised at last year’s Gala. For more information, please contact Shreema Sanghvi at (212) 997-0100.
For press passes and interviews, please contact Kavya Rajan at (646) 530-8964.
For more information contact:
Press Contact: Kavya Rajan
kavya@aifoundation.org / (646) 530-8964
http://www.AIFoundation.org