Smile Foundation

Smile Foundation
Founded 2002
Type Not for profit
Headquarters New Delhi, India
Location
  • India
Key people
 Santanu Mishra, Co-Founder & Executive Trustee
Slogan For Children's Health & Education
Website http://www.smilefoundationindia.org

Smile Foundation is a non-profit organisation, having its head office in New Delhi, India. It was established in the year 2002 by a group of corporate professionals from diverse backgrounds. Currently, the organisation has presence across 25 states, with six regional offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Goa and Chennai.

The organisation works for the welfare of children,[1] their families[2][3] and the community through four major programmes, namely Education, Livelihood,[4] Healthcare[5] and Women Empowerment.[6]

Working Models

The organisation has two working models: Social Venture philanthropy[7] (SVP) and Outreach.

Social Venture Philanthropy (SVP)[8] is a model based on the business concept of venture capital. Under SVP, the organisation aims to identify, handhold, and build capacities of grassroots NGOs. The prime focus is also on reaching scalability and sustainability of the grass root NGO. In this way, the organisation wants to create a culture of leadership and inculcating accountability among them.

Outreach[9] is the model under which the organisation directly implements development projects for underprivileged communities in villages as well as urban slums across the country. To execute the initiatives directly in target locations, the organisation partners with corporate bodies, PSUs and international development organisations.

Areas of Interventions

Education

Started in the year 2002, Mission Education is a national-level programme that focuses on providing basic education to children who are deprived of formal education due to difficult circumstances. Through the programme, non-school going children/out-of-school children, school drop-outs as well as the first generation learners are provided education through various remedial and bridge courses. At present, it is running more than 90 projects across 25 states in India. The projects focus in developing the poor neighbourhoods by building linkages between the child and the community.[10] Through interventions, efforts are made to reform the socio-economic conditions that force children to enter the workforce and never step in a school. The interventions include facilitating the education rights of children and advocacy for effective implementation of the programmes.[11]

It partners with other NGOs to ensure that effective learning outcomes are achieved by schools for their students.[12] To effectively advocate its strategic goals in the areas under its programme coverage, Smile Foundation recruits, trains and manages a dedicated cadre of project coordinators, mobilizers and volunteers. In remote and difficult areas, Smile Foundation manages and implements Mission Education projects directly.[13]

The concrete aspects of the Mission Education programme include scholarship support to girls, providing training to teachers; establishing and stocking libraries, and providing the educational centres with computers.[14] With the twin objectives of providing nutrition and ensuring 100% attendance of children, the programme also provides nutritious mid-day meals in many of its Mission Education centres.

Healthcare

Smile on Wheels (SoW)—is a mobile hospital that is equipped with facilities, such as X-rays, audio-visual aids, lab equipment, and run by trained medical staff. It is capable of crossing almost any terrain and reaching to the underprivileged residents of both the reachable and the remotest corners of India. It brings free and quality healthcare to all Indians, regardless of where they live.[15] Besides providing immediate curative/diagnostic services, Smile on Wheels also aims at enhancing health seeking behaviour of the community as part of its preventive and promotive healthcare programme. The same is accomplished through structured group meetings as well as one-to-one counselling sessions, which are very intensive in nature.[16]

Smile Health Camps are also organised by Smile Foundation alongside bringing adequate healthcare to a largely populated country like India with mobile hospitals. These camps are organised in different parts of the country on the basis of health needs of a specific location.[17] Such camps aim at promoting health seeking behaviour in the long term and thus, unlike a general curative health camp, these camps also majorly work on building awareness regarding common ailments, family planning methods, nutrition and hygiene and sanitation. Smile Health Camps provide comprehensive health services free of any cost.

Multi-Disciplinary Mega Health Camp is also an integral part of Smile Foundation’s healthcare programme. Conducted on a regular basis in both rural and urban areas, these camps offer integrated multi-disciplinary health care services, including investigative and surgical interventions. The camp features a makeshift hospital with more than 500 beds. Over 100 specialist doctors and paramedical staff from surgery, ophthalmology, gynaecology, dentistry, orthopaedics, medicine, ENT, anaesthesia, radiology, paediatrics and pathology provide voluntary service at the camp. Special arrangements are made to provide free accommodation and food for the patients as well as the visitors. Local doctors and government surgical units add strength to the endeavours.[18]

Livelihood

Smile Twin e-Learning Programme (STeP) is a stepping stone for youths who have formal education but lack employability skills like basic computer literacy and English proficiency. The programme’s mission is to equip youths from marginalized communities with appropriate skills, so that they earn for a dignified living and dream for a better tomorrow.[19]

The concept of STeP was evolved as a logical linkage to the Mission Education programme where Smile Foundation supports the basic education of children between 5 and 14 years of age. It emerged from the need to link education to the job-oriented knowledge and skills. The programme is purposely designed to train underprivileged youths between the age group of 18 and 25 years, who have a minimum qualification of Class 10. They are given meaningful vocational training in the well-equipped STeP centres, set up in 16 states across the country.[20]

Under this programme, Smile Foundation sets up STeP centres across the country, mobilizes target areas in order to create awareness about the vocational training module and ensures maximum enrolment through counselling sessions of families about how the six months training course could bring about a transformation in their lives. These six months of training comprises English Proficiency Skills, Basic Computer Education, Soft Skills, Basic Management, Retail Sales Management and Personality Development, beside career counselling sessions, exposure visits to various professional sectors and finally placement assistance.[21]

Women Empowerment

Swabhiman, meaning ‘self-respect’ in English, is a programme designed to enable girls and women realize their optimum potential in every sphere of life—be it home, workplace or community. The programme enables women and adolescent girls, who belong to lower socio-economic strata, to lead a life of dignity through realisation of their self-esteem and inner potential.[22]

Through innovative community practices, this programme makes marginalised and socially excluded women and adolescent girls realize individual and collective self-esteem and inner strength. One of the key interventions of Swabhiman promotes positive health seeking behaviour through various group activities like meetings & counselling sessions as well as house-to-house visits. The focus is on addressing critical issues like consequences of early marriage and early pregnancy, benefits of early registration of pregnancy and institutional delivery, significance of proper ante natal & post natal care, having healthy & economical food and nutrient supplements, importance of breast feeding, etc.[23]

Adolescent girls are an important target group under Swabhiman.[24] Young girls from within the community are selected as change agents and given intensive training on issues like Gender and Reproductive Health, rights and legal provisions, life skills education including negotiation skills and decision making, etc. Change Agents form a cadre of peer educators within the community who in turn create a cascading effect by equipping community women in their journey towards empowerment. Change Agents and Peer Educators are instrumental in creating behavioural change that stays within the community for long.[25]

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "Nutrition for Children".
  2. ↑ "E-learning centre a stepping stone to success for poor youth in Ahmedabad".
  3. ↑ "Training Underprivileged Youth".
  4. ↑ "Programme Helps Women Acquire New Skills".
  5. ↑ "Mobile Hospital Launched in bangalore".
  6. ↑ "Washington Post on Women Empowerment Programme by Smile Foundation".
  7. ↑ "Social Venture Philanthropy".
  8. ↑ "The Guardian on Venture Philanthropy Model".
  9. ↑ "Outreach Projects on Health".
  10. ↑ "Sending 5000 children to school".
  11. ↑ "Study Together, Dream Together".
  12. ↑ "Improve lives through education".
  13. ↑ "Smile Foundation celebrates International Literacy Day".
  14. ↑ "Mission Education Programme".
  15. ↑ "Karnataka gets its first mobile hospital".
  16. ↑ "Smile on Wheels launched in Mumbai".
  17. ↑ "Smile Foundation organises Health Camp".
  18. ↑ "Annual Health Camp for Poor Villagers".
  19. ↑ "Bringing cheer to the less fortunate".
  20. ↑ "Connectivity makes us smile".
  21. ↑ "Employability programme for underprivileged youth".
  22. ↑ "Serving society smile".
  23. ↑ "Swabhiman programme for the girl child".
  24. ↑ "Spreading cheers on Women's Day".
  25. ↑ "Swabhiman – an initiative in women's self respect".
  26. ↑ "NGO Leadership & Excellence Awards 2015".
  27. ↑ "Best NGO (Skill Development)".
  28. ↑ "ICAI CSR Award 2015".
  29. ↑ "Global CSR Excellence & Leadership Award 2014".
  30. ↑ "Education Excellence Awards 2013".
  31. ↑ "NGO Excellence Award".
  32. ↑ "Quality Initiative Mission Award".
  33. ↑ "GE Healthcare - Modern Medicare Excellence Award".
  34. ↑ "Asia-pacific Child Rights Awards".

External links