IndiaPost.com - She developed innovative HIV/AIDS education

AHMEDABAD, Gujarat: While Aazamina Rangwala, 26, had tremendous responsibility for international public health programs at the macro level through her development job in Washington DC, she felt that something was missing.

"While I reveled in the amazing accomplishments of our field projects in Africa and beyond, I wanted to do more. I wanted to push the boundaries on HIV/AIDS awareness and my own limits in service. I also wanted to do more for my own country - India."

In January 2007, Aazamina embarked on a yearlong service journey with Indicorps that landed her in Sangli, Maharashtra where she developed and implemented an HIV/AIDS peer education program for migrant workers.

Aazamina was able to leverage her macro-level HIV/AIDS knowledge and promote a community-based approach to addressing the challenges in India's battle with HIV/AIDS. Aazamina explains by saying,

"The reports I read jumped to life as I trained peer educators to approach community members with sensitivity and understanding. The challenges of tailoring the program for specific migrant communities were immense.

In the process, I learned to push my own potential for making positive change in the world." Aazamina's Indicorps fellowship experience has made her rethink the meaning of development and her life trajectory.

Many young Indians such as Aazamina - from the United States to Australia, the United Kingdom to South Africa - are uniting to address India's most pressing development challenges. By directly applying their education and work experience, Indicorps fellows have done everything from enhancing artisan-based livelihoods to improving tribal education to generating awareness for sanitation practices.

The highly competitive Indicorps Fellowship program aims to nurture a new brand of socially conscious leaders with the character, knowledge, commitment, and vision to transform India and the world.

The Indicorps Fellowship program selects emerging Indian leaders for structured one- and two-year grassroots service opportunities in India. While many feel that a year is too long to commit, Indicorps alumnus Rish Sanghvi feels otherwise: "Is one year a long time? By some measures it is.

But it is only 1.5 percent of your life. And if it is to serve as an inflection point for the remaining 98.5 percent, then I think it's a chance you have to be willing to take." Aazamina Rangwala and numerous other Indian professionals apply professional experience to grassroots service projects through Indicorps Fellowships.