Smile Foundation
Smile Foundation
Smile Foundation is a national level development organization reaching out to more than
100,000 underprivileged children & youth directly through more than 130 welfare projects on
subjects like education, healthcare, livelihood, women empowerment, and advocacy across 22
states of India.
Genesis of Smile Foundation
"Sustainability, social equality and the environment are now business problems. And corporate
leaders can't depend on governments to solve them." - Peter Senge, founder of the Society for
Organisational Learning (SOL). Senge's principles find an echo in the ideologies behind Smile
Foundation formed in 2002 by a group of corporate professionals who, decided to finance,
handhold and support genuine grassroots' initiatives targeted at providing education and health to
underprivileged children. In the process, becoming the first ever grantmaker and changing the
face of thousands of lives
Model Smile Foundation:
Social Venture Philanthropy
Smile Foundation has introduced the model of Social Venture Philanthropy (SVP), an idea
successful in the business world as venture capital. The foundation identifies, handholds and
build capacities of genuine grassroots NGOs to achieve scalability and sustainability
with a deep sense of accountability among the non-profits.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Smile Foundation has the privilege of forming alliances with a number of corporate
institutions besides several national and international institutions.
Many corporate houses like Microsoft Inc., P & G, UPS Inc., Barclays, Caterpillar,
Samsung, HDFC, AEGIS, HSBC, XANSA, Suzlon Energy, Sandwood Infratech,
TechMahindra, Jindal Stainless Limited, CVENT, Canara Bank, GAIL, SAIL etc. have
partnered with Smile Foundation under Corporate Social Responsibility.
Institutional & Educational Alliances
Smile Foundation has alliances with many prominent national and international
institutions like Caterpillar Foundation, Child reach International, Target International,
Indian Institute of Management, International Management Institute, Welcome group
Graduate School of Hotel Administration, Delhi University, San Francisco State
University, Kellogg School of Management, University of Arizona, Tata Institute of
Social Sciences, Indian Institute Foreign Trade, Asset India Foundation USA, Shinnyo-
en Japan, Times Foundation, Population Foundation of India, Soul City South Africa,
Cese Brazil, Wilde Ganzen, Net4Kids and Kids Rights from The Netherlands, to name a
few.
Programmes of Smile Foundation
1. Mission Education
Under Mission Education programme, Smile has supported more than 150 basic
child education & healthcare initiatives till date. Beneficiaries covered: 30,000
2. Smile Twin e-Learning Projects [STeP]
This is an innovative employability programme focusing on underprivileged
youth. They get trainings in skills like English proficiency, computer operations
and personality development etc. which are in tandem with job market
requirement mainly in retail and service industries.
At present, 38 centres are operational in 16 Indian states. Smile plans to cover
50,000 youth in next 5 years across India.
Students from Smile Twin e-Learning Projects have already been employed with
companies like Café Coffee Day, Westside Stores, NOKIA, HDFC Bank and
Chroma. Present Beneficiaries: 1527 [Beginning of 2008-09]
3. Smile on Wheels
Smile on Wheels is a mobile health care programme which aims to take
comprehensive health care services (preventive, promotive and curative) for the
most underprivileged population in remote rural areas and urban slums who are
either out of reach from health care facilities or are too poor to afford it.
At present, the programme is reaching out to 1.5 lakh needy people directly from
249 villages, with a total population of 7.5 lakh, across 5 states of India namely,
Orissa, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. The
programme is going to be launched for the slums population for Delhi and
Chennai very soon. Smile is planning to add another 20 Smile on Wheels
projects in coming year.
Present Beneficiaries:1,50,000
No.of Villages/Slums:249
Total Population Area: 7.5 Lakh
4. Swabhiman: for Health & Empowerment of the Girl Child
Swabhiman, meaning self respect in Hindi, is a health and empowerment
programme for the girl child.
Swabhiman, launched in 2005, has taken its first step towards becoming a
national phenomenon. After its successful implementation in Delhi, where it is
reaching out to around 80,000 populations, the intervention has been launched in
Haryana state – a State at the bottom of the ladder in terms of sex ratio
consequent to incidence of female feticide. Swabhiman aims to cover a
population of 60,000 in Haryana.
Population Foundation of India has been supporting Swabhiman in Delhi.
India is a land having distinction of boasting the world’s largest number of
professionally qualified women. Yet, our girl children and women are
discriminated right from womb to the tomb – be it female foeticide, gender
discrimination at home outside, access to healthcare or simply living a life with
dignity.
Swabhiman is an intervention to realise the full potential of the girl child.
Present Beneficiaries: 1, 40, 000
5. Action for Children (AFC)
Action for Children (AFC) is an innovative programme supported by a
consortium of three leading Dutch organisations namely, Wild Geese,
KidsRights and Net4kids, with funding support from Dutch International
Development Ministry of Government of the Netherlands.
As the sole Indian partner under Action for Children initiative, Smile will build
capacities of genuine grassroots NGOs across India in fund raising and
communications with the sole objective of making these initiatives self-reliant.
The modus operandi to achieve the objectives of the joint venture is aligned with
social venture philanthropy model of Smile.
AFC will also sensitize privileged citizens and involve them in development of
underprivileged children across India.
Special Interventions
Smile Foundation, apart from its regular programmes, has been taking up four special
interventions for reaching out to the most deserving children in difficult
circumstances. It include Disaster Management, Individual Support Programme [ISP],
Health with Smile, and You Can Make A Difference [YCMD].
i. Child for Child Programme
Child for Child is sensitization programme for privileged children through schools across India
about the plight of the underprivileged. More than a hundred public and government schools are
part of this initiative.
Beneficiaries in year 2007-08:
No. of Children Directly Reached:6,71,945
No. of Teachers:18,500
No. of Schools: 566
ii. Individual Support Programme [ISP]
ISP addresses special need of children in extremely difficult circumstances. Smile has been
supporting individual children under four categories of critical health cases, rehabilitation
programme, role models and education excellence. Present Beneficiaries: 69
iii. Health with Smile
Health with Smile is an innovative programme for underprivileged children wherein intensive
health camps are organised across India, covering preventive, curative and referral services;
besides providing health awareness. Present Beneficiaries: 25, 000
iv. You Can Make A Difference [YCMD]
You can Make a Difference is Sensitizing privileged masses, across age groups, directly on
children issues through various events and workshops. Present Beneficiaries: 30, 000
v. Disaster Management
In the time of disasters and natural calamities, Smile has always come forward with relief and
rehabilitation interventions with special focus on children and women, who are the most
vulnerable during such tying time. Be it Tsunami, Kashmir Earthquake, Mumbai Floods,
Mumbai Blast – Smile has been involved passionately. Present Beneficiaries: 6, 000
Our Outlook
Smile Foundation strives to reach out to 1.5 million children over a span of five years through
sustainable and accountable development initiatives; and thus emerge as a development
organization of international repute.
Network of Credible NGOs
Smile Foundation has a bandwidth of about 150 credible grassroots NGOs project partners at
present.
Good Governance
The entire management process of Smile Foundation is based on the principles of good
governance.
Policies and decisions are made through a four-tier system, namely departments & divisions,
executive committee, advisory body, and board of trustees.
The management, monitoring and accountability are governed by a four tier audit system,
namely project audit, statutory audit, internal audit, and external impact evaluation.
External evaluation of the foundation’s activities is carried out by ‘Siddhant,’ a credible
evaluating agency in the sector. All the process of governance of the foundation are also
documented by the external evaluator.
Optimum use of relevant technology is integrated with the whole system so as to ensure
impartial monitoring and optimization of resource.
Communication
Smile Foundation believes in the importance of communication to achieve the purpose of sharing
information and experience, sensitizing people as well as facilitating a platform to exchange
good work.
