New Delhi, June 7, 2022 (Published as an Impact Feature, India Today): The American India Foundation (AIF), as part of its comprehensive COVID Relief Response, launched The First Million an initiative to vaccinate a million most vulnerable Indians across the country. Covering India’s broader geographies and reaching out to the population that warranted behavior change in their attitudes and perceptions against the COVID vaccination, AIF, also designed Mission Corona Vijay – a behavior change communication campaign aimed at engineering COVID appropriate behavior and persuading the hesitant population to get both doses to complete the vaccination cycle.
The vaccination initiative that started in Delhi in July 2021 eventually spread across 26 states within six months, successfully facilitating over 2 million vaccine doses and vaccinating over 1.8 million unique individuals in India. Driven by equity, inclusion, and positive discrimination, the initiative focused on facilitating vaccination for sex workers, tribal communities, street vendors, migrant workers, persons with disabilities and vulnerable women.
AIF is committed to improving the lives of India’s underprivileged population, with a special focus on women, children and youth. With the pandemic disproportionately impacting the poor, AIF has pivoted to design and deliver interventions that rehabilitate disenfranchised communities around the country. Leveraging the experience of the past 20 years and the synergies with state governments, AIF launched Project Entre-Prerana, an intervention at the confluence of digital and financial inclusion, to implement systemic transformation focused on reviving the livelihoods of 1 million street vendors and other micro-entrepreneurs, by providing them access to new sources of income, low-cost working capital and mainstreaming their business through formal registration. Nishant further added, Through our flagship Education program – Digital Equalizer, during unprecedented lockdowns and school closure, AIF ensured that children with no digital access continued their learning through community/remedial classes, tablets and pen drive loaded with content, along with tailored digital content and worksheets. Entre-Prerana and DE are among many programmatic interventions that AIF has undertaken to rehabilitate the lives of those at the margins, reaching out to more than 12.9 million people across 35 States and Union Territories in the country.
AIF Covid relief response
Since the first outbreak, the American India Foundation has mounted one of the largest relief responses in its history to help close to 4 million people fight the health, economic, and social impact of COVID-19. Our efforts focus on critical areas of saving lives, fighting systemic shortfalls, burgeoning poverty and inequality for the poor and vulnerable, supporting job creation, and rebuilding in better ways. From April 2021 through March 2022, AIF raised over $44 Million through 19,217 donors and leveraged more than $9.5 million worth of Government assets and resources to reach 560 districts across 31 States and Union Territories of India with COVID-19 relief efforts.
This piece was featured as an Impact Feature, India Today. Link: https://www.indiatoday.in/impact-feature/story/american-india-foundation-s-unique-vaccination-initiative-successfully-facilitates-over-2m-vaccinations-across-26-indian-states-1959299-2022-06-07
