American India Foundation summit Personalizes India's Caregivers

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AIF Summit Personalizes India's Caregivers, Needy

By RICHARD SPRINGER

India-West Staff Reporter

SAN JOSE, Calif. - No statistic, declaration or presentation was

more eloquent or immediate in its impact at the American India

Foundation's Bay Area Summit than the heart-tugging slides showing

children cared for by the Freedom Foundation, a Bangalore-based non-

governmental organization that opened India's first care center for

HIV-positive persons in 1996.

Ashok Rau, founder of the pioneering NGO, matter-of-factly explained

the personalities and aspirations of the children, whose eyes

sparkled with hopes and dreams, as their profiles, by contrast,

detailed their painful histories: " orphaned due to AIDS, " " watched

her sister and brother die of AIDS on the streets of Jaipur, " " found

abandoned in a railway station in Mumbai. "

" We started in a small way, " Rau said, pointing at one slide, " in an

abandoned chicken coop. " The organization now has centers all over

India, but one fact hasn't changed, he said: the continuing

stigmatization of those with HIV/AIDS.

The AIF-UN East and West Coast summits, held in New York Sept. 19

and at the San Convention Center here Sept. 23, put faces and

action agendas in front of audiences who support AIF's work and the

implementation of the UN " Millennium Development Goals in India. "

The full story appears in the print edition of India-West

http://www.indiawest.com/view.php?

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