Nirmala Garimella is the co-founder of www.lokvani.com and Head of Development of the American India Foundation.Aside from her work, she strengthens her local community by serving as a Lexington town meeting member, as the Co-President of the Indian Americans of Lexington (IAL), and a volunteer media team member of Dawnww.org. In the past, Nirmala has been on the the steering committee of the Cary Memorial Library campaign, Lexington Education Foundation, and a member of the Sub-Committee for Demographic Change, Lexington Vision 2020 and other volunteer groups. She has a Core Certification degree in Non Profit Leadership and Management from Boston University.
Can you tell us a little about your journey to the US?
On a cold winter day in the month of February, 1994, my family landed at JFK airport in New York City from Hyderabad. I looked expectantly outside at the blazing bright sun and thought, Hmm it is so nice and bright, where is the cold? That lasted a minute as the big sliding doors snapped open and a cold blast of freezing air hit us. That was my introduction to something I least expected. From then on, lots of learning and adapting to a new life happened.As any immigrant we came armed with two suitcases, a few Indian spices and steel utensils and a load full of books for the kids. It has been 22 years since and I can finally say we have arrived.
What motivated you to start Lokvani?
Someone once said - the best ideas start in a basement. All we needed were five enthusiastic community loving individuals hungry to do things differently. If you remember, we wanted to fulfill a need that was so critical as a resource - news of the community and no one at that time was doing it online. We had a combined vision and an insatiable energy to do it. To me, with my background in journalism and communication, I was excited about the possibilities of such an endeavor. We started out scrambling to gather around 100 of our friends emails to send our newsletter to them and today we are at 50,000 subscribers. I think that is pretty amazing!
What has been the greatest accomplishment of Lokvani in your mind?
The narrative of a community is a powerful story of impact.The power of a story is similar.You are in a process of creation with the possibility of something happening..The essence of Lokvani has always been to tell the stories of the community. Are we hearing you, helping you, is something happening? A lot of thought goes into what we do.
Looking back we have simply done that - through our various columns on interviews of local community members in our 15 years of existence.
We have covered women of influence, encouraged youth to find a voice, allowed people to experiment with recipes from your truly, challenged brain power with math inclined, caught up with the bollywood through Bollywoood Baatein, made you smile with our jokes and Humor columns and featured local organizations in the social, non profit and cultural world. In other words we have covered it all and enjoyed every minute of it. We have also given back to the community in so many ways. I think this says something of ourselves too.
How did you get involved with AIF?
In 2005, as you know we lost our partner and my best friend Chitra in a tragic road accident. I was pretty down those days and was looking to get involved in a non profit that will be meaningful to me. In 2006, I was fortunate to be approached by Venky Raghavendra of AIF who was trying to organize our first gala here in Boston. I was working part time at TiE Boston for their annual event and readily agreed to volunteer. It has been 10 years now serving at AIF. I have grown organically in the organization, first as a volunteer, then a manager and now as head of development. Being part of AIF as we often discuss within our team is a labor of love driven by passion to give back to the country of our birth. Its mission is to alleviate poverty through interventions in education, livelihoods and public health in the most marginalized regions of India. I am constantly amazed at the generosity of our donors and the spirit of volunteerism. What keeps me going is the belief that each one of us has the power to bring change whether by educating a child, empowering a woman or providing respect and dignity to an individual. I feel my work at AIF underlines all these and of course I have an amazing and supportive Trustee and volunteer base that makes every day enriching and happy.
What has been the great accomplishment of AIF?
As a non profit you are looking for systemic change and scale both that requires patience, resilience and hard work. We have raised more than $100m since inception and impacted 3.1m lives working with 248 NGO's in India in almost 23 states. That said,our greatest accomplishment has also been in bringing people from two democracies together to acheive equity and social justice and empowering many many individuals to be part of the process.
You have been active in the town and now you are a town meeting member. What is that experience like?
I have been living in Lexington for 18 years and it is a town to be proud. It is welcoming, embraces diversity and has a thoughful community that is constantly trying to be proactive about town issues. My involvement with the town started early as a class parent in my children's classroom. I then moved to serve on the board of the PTA and LEF. During this time a group of us founded IAL.( Indian Americans of Lexington)The idea was to be celebrate our Indian heritage but also to be engaged in town committees. One committe that I got involved was the sub committee of demographic change which was formed to study the growing demographics of Asian Americans. Our report recommended that the town should be prepared to serve the needs through a process of pull and push from both ends. I realized that as an Indian American we need to step up and serve on committees to get our voice heard and also be engaged in the town. That naturally brought me to think about town governance. Having already volunteered for a few organizations and encouraged by the other local TM members, I decided to run this year. I think my election was unique as I had no time to campaign in any form because I was in India during that time. I did win and that was nice.
Town meetings are held every Monday and Wednesday nights.It has been hectic in the last two months. We are now almost at the end as a majority of articles in town have came up for vote.The amount of learning,thoughtfulness and the passion of town members is truly an eye opener . People care whether the town needs a debt exclusion for funding of local schools, or sidewalks or street lights need to be implemented or if mansionization of Lexington should be encouraged. What I have learnt is that time commitment is important and the value of citizenry cannot be underestimated. I am glad that I was given the opportunity to serve.
What message do you have for our readers?
Be a loyal reader of Lokvani ( smiles ) and always go about your work or play because it makes you happy not because you need a reason or an agenda. Surround yourself with good friends and if you have a wonderful supportive family like I do then always reinforce that love for them every day in your life.
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