COVID-19 crisis: Indiaspora raises $800,000 for food security in US and India

As coronavirus continues to ravage nations around the world, the loss is not only in human life but also in the very fabric of existence, the fundamentals of food and health, of a livelihood. While Americans wait for the federal government’s stimulus package to get their lives restarted, many individuals and institutions are already lending a hand in trying to bring normalcy.

A group of Indian-American entrepreneurs brought together by Indiaspora, a DC-based community organization, donated $500,000 for food security in both India and the US in an initiative called ChaloGive for COVID-19 (www.chalogive.org). Within a week this figure has escalated to $800,000 and counting, with a goal of raising one million dollars. All funding will address the food emergency brought on by the pandemic.

MR Rangaswami, founder and chairman of the board of Indiaspora, recalls that the mandate was to do something immediately that was high impact and scalable, and which would help both America and India. He says, “The feeling was we made our wealth here and this is where we should take care of people – right now there are 22 million unemployed so it’s a big issue. But we also wanted to do something for the migrant workers in India who are really hurting at this time.”