'Change Beats' in India

Smile Foundation has been chosen to host a musical workshop for young musicians from The Netherlands, Tanzania and India to produce 2 songs as part of the 'Change Beats' project 2010, initiated by Dutch development organisation called Change for Children.

IIT, IIM volunteer with Smile Foundation

In order to sensitise the privileged youth and bridge the gap between privileged and underprivileged youth, the STeP team organised several volunteer engagement activities with students of IIT, IIM, IIFT and Delhi University. The students from these institutions conducted special classes for STeP students, designed branding materials and helped in research activities being undertaken by the programme team. Under Smile Foundation's “Be The Change” campaign, short videos on child labour were screened during the annual cultural festival of IIT Madras.

Role of Media

Smile Foundation in association with communication professionals organised a workshop for the employees on effective ways to interact with the journalists. The communication experts oriented the spokespersons on various aspects of how to effectively interact with media – both print and electronic at national and global levels.

Volunteering by Barclays staff

Barclays Bank, GRCB India continued with the series of Employee Engagement Programme with STeP students and celebrated the 4th Volunteering Day. Apart from counseling on career related aspects, quiz and fun games, the students discussed on ways to save the environment.

Managing social development

Students of management from The Netherlands visited some of the projects of Smile Foundation in New Delhi. They studied the contrast between India's fast developing economy and the need for social development for a vast section of the underprivileged population.

ICT for development of underprivileged

Professor Tim Unwin from the University of London who also chairs ICT, UNESCO interacted with Smile Foundation's staff on the usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for empowering underprivileged children and youth.

Branding - the internet way

Smile Foundation organised a week long workshop on online brand promtion and customer relationship management for its IT and communication team with Hugo Lingeman, an internet entrepreneur and online marketing consultant for Net4kids, The Netherlands. The workshop has helped in better analysis of the internet media and enabling relationship with the vistors.

Yale University joins “Be The Change” campaign

Smile Foundation organised a volunteering programme for 14 students from the Yale University, USA for one week. The students got sensitised on the education and empowerment issues during their visit to several projects. They also conducted counseling sessions for adolescent girls on family planning and painted a canvas signifying empowerment of girl child.