Smile Foundation NGO

On August 26, 2010, in Types of NGOs, by Sushant

Smile Foundation is one of the leading NGOs of India which acts as a Social Venture Philanthropist. It promotes
the universal education among underprivileged children and plays instrumental role in creating the process for
embracing these children into mainstream society. It looks to facilitate the children into becoming productive
assets, and generate the groundwork for nation building. Some of the programs run by Smile Foundation NGO
are mentioned below.
Mission Education Mission Education refers to a national level programme that focuses on providing the basic
education for underprivileged children and youth. Smile philosophy stresses on the need of quality education
for the people to make them better human beings.
Smile on Wheels is a healthcare program that is operated by well-equipped medical van and a medical team
comprising of specialized doctors, medical staff, nurses, equipments and medicines. It makes tour to the
identified villages and slums in a methodical manner. This van covers the rural or slum areas in neighbourhood
region where there is lack of governmental health care facilities. Each unit covers the area up to 25 kms from
its centre and they make visits to 2-3 villages daily in a regular manner. The mobile hospitals offer preventive
and curative medical expertise for the needy children and women who are residing in remote rural areas and
urban slums.
Smile Twin e-Learning Programme
(STeP) is an effort by smile
foundation towards generating a
team of employable youth
belonging to underprivileged
section by enhancing their skill as
per the market requirements. The
programme intends to prepare
the urban underprivileged youth
with skills in Basic Computer
Education and Soft Skills, English
Proficiency, for increasing their
prospects of employment in fast
growing industries like BPO and
ITES, retail, hospitality.
Swabhiman is an initiative of
Smile Foundation that is focussed
for lifting the pride and dignity for our girl. This program enables the women to realize their complete potential
by enhancing their self esteem in every sphere of life including home, office or community.

Smile Foundation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Smile Foundation

Founded

2002

Type

Not for profit

Headquarte

New Delhi, India

rs

Location
Key people

India
Santanu Mishra, Co-Founder & Executive
Trustee

Slogan

For Children's Health & Education

Website

http://www.smilefoundationindia.org

Smile Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in New Delhi, India. It was established in
2002 and has a presence in 25 states and 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]

Contents
[hide]

1 Working Models

2 Areas of Interventions
o

2.1 Education

2.2 Healthcare

2.3 Livelihood

2.4 Women Empowerment

3 Awards

4 References

5 External links

Working Models[edit]
The organisation has two working models: social venture philanthropy[7] (SVP) and outreach.
Social venture philanthropy is a model based on the business concept of venture capital. [8] 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 aims to create a culture of leadership and inculcating accountability among
them.
Outreach is the model under which the organisation directly implements development projects for
underprivileged communities in villages as well as urban slums across the country.[9] To execute
the initiatives directly in target locations, the organisation partners with corporate bodies, PSUs
and international development organisations.

Areas of Interventions[edit]
Education[edit]
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 socioeconomic 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[edit]
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 Foundations 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[edit]
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
programmes 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[edit]
Swabhiman (translated as self-respect in English) is a programme designed to enable girls and
women realize their optimum potential in every sphere of lifebe it home, workplace or
community. The programme enables women and adolescent girls, who belong to lower socioeconomic 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[edit]

NGO Leadership & Excellence Awards 2015 by ABP News[26]

Best NGO 2015 (Skill Development) by ASSOCHAM[27]

ICAI CSR Award 2015 for the Best CSR Project in Women Empowerment[28]

Global CSR Excellence & Leadership Award 2014 by ABP News[29]

Education Excellence Award 2013 by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and

Industries (ASSOCHAM)[30]

Corporate Excellence Award for NGO Excellence 2013 by IPE (Institute of Public
Enterprise)[31]

Quality Initiative Mission Award 2013[32]

Healthcare Leadership Award 2012

GE Healthcare - Modern Medicare Excellence Award[33]

Asia-pacific Child Rights Awards[34]

Barclays Bank Chairmans Awards