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This article is being prepared as an assignment for Prof. Moliterno's Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurship class

With an estimated 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty worldwide, it is recognized that poverty, inequality and marginalization are both the root causes and consequences of poor health. The solutions to these global health problems are as simple as they are difficult to achieve. At least six million lives could be saved each year if all mothers and children had access to affordable health interventions. A further 2.2 million child deaths could be prevented through improvements in hygiene behavior and the provision of safe sanitation and clean drinking water. And if we could eliminate malnutrition - which contributes to at least a third of all deaths among children under five - countless more lives would be saved.

Mission
The Smile Foundation is a non government organization (NGO) founded in India in 2002 by a group of 40 friends, now board members, whose goal was to increase the quality of education and welfare for India's underprivileged youth and women. Working under the philosophy of Peter Senge who believed that education and the environment should be the focus of business models, its goal is to make welfare the focus of new enterprises in order to strengthen health and educational systems for underprivileged children. After ten years of operating, the Smile Foundation has implemented grass root initiatives that provide education for children, livelihood for youth, healthcare in impoverished communities, and women empowerment that have reached over 2 million people.

Approach to education
India  has suffered from an under educated community. With only 59% of males and 49% of females attending secondary school, the Smile Foundation has made it their goal to change these statistics by implementing educational systems specifically for underprivileged children with the belief that education prompts awareness, and therefore becomes the basis for addressing other prevalent issues of healthcare, poverty, human rights, and disease. Their educational systems have reached over 14,500 neglected children in 24 states  across India.

The Smile Foundation provides education to a wide range of ages, from preschool to trade school. Instead of using a standard curriculum, it works with other organizations and earns funding from sponsor supporters to craft educational programs that more effectively address the specific needs of the individuals and communities they work with. Their partnerships include work with Crisil, Essar, Target, TaTa, Zee TV, Oriental Insurance, Alcoa, Henkel, BNY Mellon, Herbal Life, Jade, Jockey, Capital One ), in addition to partnering with another non-profit organization called Rasta to help educate girls in the east Delhi slums. For each educational program, the Smile Foundation appoints community leaders who are in charge of management, operation, and consistently providing project reports to their sponsors to maintain a transparent relationship about how the organization is using its donated resources. The Smile Foundation's ultimate goal for each education initiative is to become sustainable programs that can be continuously developed without further aid from the organization or its sponsors.

Educational Programs
The Smile Foundation organizes their education into the four following age groups: The first is Crèche, a day care, that educates children up to three years old. The next is a preschool that educates children up to six years old, followed by non-formal education that educates up to fourteen years old, and finally bridge courses that educates older youth or adults who did not complete their education. These education courses and programs take the form of grassroots initiatives, which are supported by funding and supplies from The Smile Foundation sponsors. With collaboration between these individual grassroots initiatives and specific sponsors, the Smile Foundation has been able to kick start educational systems that have proven to evolve into effective systems that have sustained beyond the aid of the foundation. The Smile Foundation measures their success rate based on the number of children they are able to educate.

Healthcare initiatives
Smile on Wheels Healthcare in the impoverished slums of rural India has become an increasingly widespread issue and the basis of increasing mortality rates as people cannot access adequate health services. The primary cause of these increasing mortality rates are have are lack of education, and the fact that most workers lose a day's wage to travel to the nearest medical facility and access preventative health measures. This is what prompted the Smile on Wheels program-- a mobile hospital that travels to these various communities to provide health services and education, with a particular focus on women and children. The Smile Foundation raises capital to re-invest in Smile on Wheels hospitals and continue to provide these services to communities with the highest mortality rates. Since its creation in 2006, the program has taken the form of 12 operational projects in 172 slums at 11 different locations across 9 country states. Its growing services have directly provided aid for 4,078,923 people.

Smile Health Camps Smile Health Camps is another project of The Smile Foundation with a focus on health promotion and disease prevention. As opposed to a mobile hospital like Smile on Wheels, the Smile Health Camps are camps that provide immediate healthcare to what are known as "intervention areas"-- communities who are particularly suffering from disease. The goal of this program is to be able to reach out to over 500 districts and communities that may be struggling with disease.

Multi-Disciplinary Mega Health Camps In 2005, the Smile Foundation has partnered with Jain Sabha Women's Wing to station 10 day camps at roughly 100 villages around Shahcpura in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan. These camps provide free diagnosis, medicines, food, and surgical interventions in a make-shift hospital environment with 500 beds run by trained experts. Over the past seven years, these camps have provided aid to roughly 20,000 people annually. (http://www.smilefoundationindia.org/multi_disciplinary_mega_health%20.htm)

General Health Camps General General Health Camps are set up all aournd India. Centered around the needs of specific areas, these camps provide awareness and sustainable health practices. These camps are free of charge and have helped over 25,000 people struggling with common ailments, nutrition and family planning. In the past, the Smile Foundaiton has partnered with a number of organizations and institutions to help run these camps. Their partnerships include: Canara Bank, Rotary Club of Delhi South (New Delhi), Hindalco Industries Ltd, Lafarge India Pvt. Ltd, AIIMS & Red Cross Society (Delhi), Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology Delhi (Delhi), Lifeline Hospital (Chennai), St. Martha Hospital (Bangalore), Vinayak Hospital (Delhi & NCR), Fullerton, Ajay Memorial Foundation (Tamil Nadu). (http://www.smilefoundationindia.org/general__health_camps.htm)

The healthcare initiatives of Smile have been encouraged by many national and international organisations such as Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) giants like Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL). Other organisations that have supported Smile in Camps programme include Canara bank, Rotary Club of Delhi South (New Delhi), HINDALCO Industries Ltd, Lafarge India Pvt Ltd, AIIMS & Red Cross Society (New Delhi), Association of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Delhi (New Delhi), Lifeline Hospital (Chennai), St Martha Hospital (Bengaluru), Vinayak Hospital [Delhi & National Capital Region (NCR)], Fullerton and Ajay Memorial Foundation (AMF) (Tamil Nadu).

Swabhiman
Among the Smile Foundation’s most successful initiatives is Swabhiman, a program that targets underprivileged girls and women in the region, and works towards sustainable development to address their needs. Since its creation,the program has reached approximately 150,000 people. In the Swabhiman region, lack of proper education has made 40 percent of women illiterate due to lack of education and the target of many crimes that are at an all time high rate. As a result of lack of adequate health services, sanitation, and education, women in this region are put at a disadvantage in opportunities to advance that may advance their social and professional standing. Instead, many suffer from poverty and malnutrition, and are forced to enter marriages at an early age. To address the shortcomings of women, this program seeks to create opportunities for empowerment specifically by addressing the needs of better education and health systems. The Smile Foundation aims to build on individual as well as collective self-esteem for these socially and professionally secluded women and girls of the Swabhiman community. Since 2005, this organization has used innovative community practices to provide thousands of women with educational support, reproductive/child health services, male involvement/changes, networking and convergence support, and also sensitization of privileged women and youth.

Parivartan
With the support from Proctor & Gamble, the Smile Foundation's initiative in Parivartan aims to improve health services for women and adolescent girls with health and hygiene concerns as a means to eliminate some of the discrimination they face. This initiative focuses on their reproductive health and menstrual hygiene through use of information, education, and communication tools. Currently the program’s number of beneficiaries stands 400,000 women and girls and has been put enforced in 4 distinct districts of Rajasthan.

The Child For Child Program
The Child For Child Program aims to decrease the wide socioeconomic gap in Indian society. The Smile Foundation has created a program that seeks to bring together a spectrum of affluent and deprived children and integrated them into the same learning environment. In doing so, its hope is to provide the more affluent children with new found appreciation and perspective on their good fortune, and a sense of social responsibility to help their less fortunate counterparts. However, there is much debate about the effectiveness of this program. Many believe that bringing together these young children is an ineffective approach to tightening a gap between social classes that is most distinct between adults. Others debate whether a young, sheltered affluent child has the potential to understand and internalize the meaning behind both their own good fortune and the lesser fortune of their peers. Nonetheless, The Child For Child Program has directly engaged over 1,800,000 children with the help of over 75,000 teachers in over 2,500 schools across India.

Recognitions
For its television campaign ‘Choone Do Aasman’ (2009) that was broadcasted on NDTV India from August 31 to October 31, 2009. This award is instituted by CASBAA, ABU and UNICEF and is given to the best television program produced in the Asia-Pacific region with a focus on child rights.
 * Asia Pacific Child Rights Awards 2010:

Nominated National Member for the Toguether4Change Alliance, effective across 100 countries and aiming to work for the well-being of children and youth in alignment.
 * Together4Change Alliance:

This award recognizes the NGO for its phenomenal work within the healthcare industry by supporting medical causes and thereby offering various services.The objective of this award to recognize real heroes in health care areas especially related to hospitals, individual doctors and other NGO organizations who are contributed to the society in a large way: A book from the publishers of civil society magazine, which profile individuals.
 * GE Healthcare – Modern Medicare Excellence Awards: NGO of the Year
 * Featured in Inventive Indians ‘great stories of change’:

For putting its best efforts along with the bank’s Indian employees in helping disadvantaged communities.
 * Barclay's Bank Chairmans Awards 2010:

Target’s International Giving Program focuses on supporting quality, accessible education for children and youth to help address these critical needs which benefit not only individuals, but also the entire community. They have partnered with Smile Foundation to help create strong communities, improve local economies and develop a better quality of life through the ‘Girl Child-Specific Intervention’ project in the urban slums of Delhi.
 * Target Awards:

Best documentary of 2010 for Choone Da Aasman (2009)
 * INB (Indian News Broadcasting) Awards:


 * Recognition among the Best 10 non Government Organization by the Mukti Foundation.