Smile Foundation

Smile Foundation is a small family effort at doing our bit of giving back. It was set up with the objective of facilitating education of children from under served backgrounds, through funds from family and friends.

This evening saw a touching validation of all our efforts. But before I go into that, let me put in some context.

Smile here is an acronym for Saraswati Mahadas Indira Learning and Education; Saraswati Mahadas being my great grandmother and Indira, my grandmother. This was started by Kamlesh, my aunt, Sukrutha, my mother ( daughters of Indira) and me, way back in 2003; yes, women power all the way :). This was during the phase when I’d quit IDBI and was wondering what else I could do in life.

It came out of a conversation I overheard between our driver, Subbareddy and his wife, Chinni. They were discussing some financial issues, and Subbareddy was saying they would need to withdraw their son from private school to send him to a government school (which meant they saved on fees). For those not familiar, all Government Schools in India offer education only in vernacular language, plus the quality is mostly sorely lacking, be it infrastructure or teaching. His wife says ‘No, never, we’re not withdrawing him from the English medium school, I want a better future for him than ours, and I’ll do anything in my capacity to give him that, even if I have to go without food’.  And there was this despair and finality in her voice which said she would go without food if forced.

At that point, my aunt was already funding school fees of her maids children. My mom was, post retirement, helping out at a shelter for street children. We decided to put our energies and resources together and that’s how Smile Foundation came into being.

The idea was to visit such schools within a radius of 5 kms of our house to identify potential school dropouts. Most of these schools won't let the kids who don't pay, take their exams.  That's the list I’d get and then do some more research to identify the really deserving children, (as our resources were also limited ) and then we’d fund the educational needs of those children, be it fees, bus pass, books, private tuition, whatever be the gauged need.  And the intent was to back those kids through to college. 

Back to the present; this evening my mother called to say that one of our first students, Geethika who we’d picked up in school and had seen through college, came back today, searching for our house, to donate Rs.4000 to the foundation. A lump in the throat moment.

I distinctly remember Geethika, because back then, when asked what her ambition and goal was she’d said, I want a home which has a door. At first I hadn’t understood. And then she explained that they lived in a shack under a bridge, and their shack didn’t have a door, and how that was always a worry as their father was an alcoholic and it was just she and her mother at home. Today she has a decent job and is able to rent a house for Rs.4000 per month, bought herself a scooter and is able to sustain the entire family. Real impact that.

In those first years, when kids would still drop out a couple of years after we'd started to help, or girls were just pulled out of studying, and I’d go through helpless frustrating times, I remember Kamlesh aunty saying, If you can make a difference to one life, if that one family comes out of poverty only because of what you did, think that your achievement’. Geethika would be one there aunty.

Thanks Aunty and Ma, for enabling this beautiful effort. And Ma, more for keeping it going even after I moved out of Hyd. I know we still have discussions on how difficult it is, the last one being three days back, but through all those downs, it's still been so worthwhile. Let's hang in there to do what we can. God willing, there will be more Geethikas'.