Shiksha Na Ruke

One of the most affected victims of the pandemic are children who now have no access to schools. While a lot of children have the means for online classes, underprivileged children are still deprived of learning as they have no access to computers or smart phones. These children already have had difficult journeys, having fought the shackles of poverty, child labour, and much more to finally reach school. But the pandemic has reversed their years of struggle.

For lakhs of such children, education has come to a halt. They can’t afford smart phones, can’t count on support of parents for home learning. Shiksha Na Ruke is a Smile Foundation initiative that is providing underprivileged children access to continuous learning. Despite everything, they have not given up on education, they continue to dream. Join hands with us to help these little dreamers continue their education.

She Can Fly

A mother, a sister, a daughter, a home-maker, a teacher, a doctor, a leader; women hold our worlds together in a million ways.A girl child comes into this world with just as many expectations, dreams and aspiration as a boy, but soon finds out that her way towards achieving them is much more challenging. The mere absence of an education and the many different set of rules that a girl has to follow according to the norms of the society makes her suffer mentally, emotionally and physically from a very young age.

Smile Foundation’s initiative ‘She Can Fly’ is an effort to enable, equip and empower girl children with quality education, proper nutrition, good health, adequate skills, and above all a lot of self-confidence to help them live their lives to their fullest potential.

This is also a step towards sensitizing the civil society at large and helping create a girl child/women friendly society to help her thrive.

Let us all come forward and join hands to give wings to her dreams. Empower, educate, and make her strong to stand her own ground and shine in her efforts. She Can Fly, let’s give her the sky!

Plate Half Full

A full plate of food filled with the goodness of nutrients is nourishing, gives one strength; both bodily and mental, keeps one active and free from diseases. One of the most important aspect for any kind of development is taking care of children, enabling them to grow up healthy. But the prevailing situation in India speaks otherwise, we have constantly failed to provide the most basic care to our children, providing healthy meals to them which results in stunted growth, malnourishment etc.

If we look closely we can find two kinds of hunger among children; one that arises out of poverty. In a situation such as this children don’ get to eat at all; often they can found lurking behind garbage bins hunting for food or begging in the streets to feed themselves. In this case children do not or cannot afford an education. They are either engaged in some sort of labor or simply loiter in the hunt for food. The other kind of hunger arises not out of the lack of food but out of the lack of proper nourishment, which can also be called hidden hunger. Hundreds of school going children suffer from hidden hunger. Parents provide whatever meal they can with the meager amounts they earn but it doesn’t fulfill the need of proper nourishment.

That backdrop set our preliminaries for Plate Half Full. This initiative is to enhance education with adequate nutrition. While it is necessary to have underprivileged children attend school, it is also just as important to have them eat regular meals in a day.