Smile Foundation wins Barclay's Bank Chairmans Awards 2010

Smile Foundation has been awarded the Barclays Bank Chairman’s Award 2010 for putting its best efforts along with the bank’s Indian employees in helping disadvantaged communities.

The 14th annual Chairman’s Awards was held in Madrid. This global award ceremony is organised by Barclays to recognise and celebrate colleagues’ achievements in their local communities. The award is given to the employees and the NGO for working together in devising innovative strategies to bring a positive change in the lives of the marginalised.

This year’s awards had received 376 nominations from 27 countries covering every area of their business. There were 10 individual and team winners from different geographical regions with one overall winner – Smile Foundation. The Foundation along with the bank’s representative Awanish Gupta, Manager – Retail Banking, was recognised for their outstanding commitment to bring a change.

Smile Foundation and Barclays have worked together to help 200 underprivileged young boys and girls in taking up the career of their choice at Smile Twin e-Learning Programme (STeP) centres. Apart from this, the Foundation and Barclays devised a holistic programme to spread awareness on health related issues of women and HIV in some specific locales of New Delhi, which have a considerably large population of immigrants and young girls engaged in adultery.

Among the jury this year, were Marcus Agius – Chairman, Barclays, Lord Ashdown – President, UNICEF UK, Geoffrey Dennis – Chief Executive, CARE International UK and Alan Rusbridger – Editor, The Guardian, among other notable people.