Recap of AIF's Banquet for Apna Clinic

We had featured American India Foundation New York Young Professionals Chapter’s annual benefit in the past. Here is a recap from AIF itself of the event.

For the 2008-2009 fiscal year, our second since forming in summer 2007, the New York Young Professional Chapter of AIF has dedicated our fundraising efforts to help finance the Apna Clinic, one of the public health initiatives of AIF. The Apna Clinic will be built in the Mustafabad area and will serve 50,000 – 60,000 people with basic healthcare and education. This effort will provide much needed care to the poor population in the area, particularly the often overlooked maternal and child care segment.

Our second annual benefit dinner, A Toast to Good Health, was held on Saturday April 11 and was the marquee event for our year. Tickets sold out and over 200 people joined us at Vermillion on Manhattan’s east side, enjoying cocktails and mingling before sitting down for dinner and the evening’s program. After some brief introductions by our Chapter Coordinators Nitin Sacheti and Sanjay Sharma, Sanjay Sinho, CEO of AIF, took the floor to discuss the mission of AIF and the Young Professionals’ role in it. Next, acclaimed author and Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute, Mira Kamdar addressed the crowd, discussing AIF’s solid developmental work in India.

After the speeches, AIF core members led the live auction of two roundtrip, upper-class tickets from New York to London on Virgin Atlantic, donated by Spotnana, a boutique executive travel firm. The audience’s enthusiasm was incredible and grew along with the bids. In the end, these tickets garnered over $5,000 for the Apna Clinic! The crowd had a great time during the auction, so after dessert, the core team took the stage again to auction two tickets from London to India on Kingfisher Airlines. Another lively run ended with $1,700 for our cause.

Once the program finished, our guests stayed on to chat and bid on silent auction items. Popular items, including lunches with AIF Trustees, were actively bid upon until the close of the evening at midnight.

All told, A Toast to Good Health raised over $14,000 for the Apna Clinic! This money will of course go to help a great cause, and we thank the 200+ attendees who came out to support the Young Professionals of AIF. Their support was critical to our success and they will surely be an active force in AIF events in the future.