AID was started in 1991 by graduate students at the University of Maryland, and supports community based development efforts in India. AID is committed to promoting sustainable, equitable and just development in India, by working with grassroots organizations and movements in India. AID supports and initiates efforts in various interconnected spheres such as education, livelihoods, natural resources, health, women's empowerment and social justice.

AID has been featured in The Hindu, siliconindia.com and Education Times of India. In 1997, AID received the International History Week Humanitarian Leadership

Mission

AID works in India and we focus on the poor and oppressed in villages and cities of India. It was started by a few Indian graduate students at the University of Maryland, College Park. It started basically as a reaction against people's tendency to "just talk about helping India" but do nothing about it.

The AID mission leads to two connected but distinct directions :

1. All our village work should aim at inspiring confidence and developing capabilities in people.

2. All our volunteers should see how best they can help. We should be able to tap every half-hour that anyone anywhere wants to spend on these issues.

From its humble beginnings in a student's apartment, AID has now grown into a big organization with chapters all over the US, UK and India. We now support organizations in almost all states of India that work on issues focusing on improving health, introducing primary education programs, women's upliftment and development, savings and income programs, and rural development.

Recently, these ideas have been given a substantial push forward with several of our volunteers returning to India and working with different NGOs and forming chapters and drawing more volunteers in India itself for this work.

The problems of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, dependency, disease, social inequalities, corruption and the dwindling of natural resources like land, forests and water reinforce one another. One problem leads to the other and feeds on another. Therefore the solutions to these problems must be interconnected, just like the problems themselves.

This interconnected nature of the problems neither starts nor stops with the people who are poor - it affects all of us. Our inability to tackle these problems, take the initiative, trust and work with others and overcome the fear to question authority or change life-styles is very much a part of this web of problems and has to be tackled.

Vision

To cover both the breadth of the country and the depth of the problems in a holistic manner through:

1. Several short-term projects geographically distributed throughout India.

2. A deeper long-term involvement in selected efforts, the goal being to reach every district or alternate district in India with one such focus effort.

Simultaneously measuring progress through the yard-sticks of self-reliance, people's involvement and volunteerism. Responding personally to people we meet as we undertake this challenge together.