Month: November 2022

SPO India Magazine (February 2016 Issue)

The New Indian Express (September 16, 2010)

The Economic Times (September 16, 2010)

Extraveller (January 13, 2016)

We all know about the recent torrential rains in the southern state of India, Tamil Nadu. The fury of nature was so vast that continuous days of rain left the major areas reeling under 3-4 feet of water. It was water everywhere and the capital city of Chennai was also very badly affected. Though this recent flood in Chennai devastated the city but the spirit of Chennai refused to succumb during the devastation and at this time they had the support of Smile Foundation.

Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation came forward at such a time of calamity. Smile Foundation benefits over 300,000 underprivileged children, their families and the community directly through 158 welfare projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, livelihood, and women empowerment across 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.

Smile Foundation, with its welfare interventions focused on children and their families, responds to the call of humanity in times of calamities under its Disaster Response programme. From the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the Uttarakhand floods, J&K floods and the recent Nepal earthquake, Smile Foundation has acted promptly to reach out and respond to the immediate needs of the disaster affected people, while also maintaining a sustainable approach to help them rebuild their lives by facilitating their education, healthcare and livelihood.

During the recent unleash of torrential rains everything in Chennai was reeling under water, the only thing refused to die down was the Spirit of Chennai. Chennai stood tall and faced the calamities fearlessly, hand in hand.

Smile Foundation started relief work as the rain got heavier and flood hit Chennai. From day one Smile Foundation reached out the flood stricken areas with dry foods, bottled water, survival kits and medical facilities. The Disaster Response team of Smile Foundation actively aided the rescue and immediate relief efforts in the city and reached approx 6 lakh people with water and food. The team had procured and distributed relief materials through 12 distribution hubs with each distribution point catering to 6-8 sub locations.

As per the need assessment done by the team on ground, water contamination was identified as a major issue, and a possible outbreak of water-borne diseases was detected. Hence the first priority was to mobilize safe drinking water in large quantity, along with dry and packaged food. In the phase I operation, Smile Foundation’s Disaster Response team had been able to distribute over 37780 kgs of dry food and 7, 56,000 litres of water supplied by PepsiCo.

The areas being covered during flood were mainly Pallavaram, Annaputtur, Naagai keni, Karima Nagar and Mudichur in Kanchipuram district; Ponneri, Ennor, Seethanambakkam and Minjur in Thiruninravuur district and the entire Chennai city region. As the water receded, the mobile hospital of Smile Foundation, Smile on Wheels (SOW) started delivering healthcare services. The Smile on Wheels van was equipped with doctors, lab technicians, Pathology services etc and also distributed medicines as well. In the next phase multi specialty health services are going to start to cope up with aftermath of the disaster.

But all said and done it was a mammoth task to accomplish alone. The team from Smile got people who offered their selfless service and helped us in reaching out. There were almost 500 such volunteers who fearlessly set out, risking their own lives and safety, to help their fellow citizens. Several of them are first-time volunteers and also those who have been rescued from the floods themselves. The volunteers worked day in & day out in extreme weather conditions, half submerged in water , exposed standing in stagnating water with sometimes cuts and bruises. There was no electric supply with feeble network coverage that hampered the co-ordination between rescuing teams and made it worse. Rain, flood, stagnant water & the high risks of adopting water borne diseases thereafter, nothing could stop them to continue the selfless service. I salute Smile Foundation and the volunteers, i.e. those unsung heroes who braved everything and stood up in the time of devastation.

All said and one, now the bad times are over but still further need assessment is now being done to devise short term and long term plans for rehabilitation and revival of the affected children and families in identified flood affected areas.

For more information about Smile Foundattion – please visit – www.smilefoundationindia.org

The Comlete Cinema (September 16, 2010)

Brew Magazine (January 2016 Issue)

Peter Senge is an American systems scientist who founded the Society for Organization Learning. He wanted to help large corporations find sustainable solutions to their problems. He also believed that social equality and environmental issues were business problems, and it was up to corporate leaders to solve them. His philosophy inspired a group of professionals in India, and the Smile Foundation was born. They started in 2002 with the aim of empowering children, youth and women via education, health care and relevant livelihood programs. 15 years in, Smile Foundation is doing a wonderful job. Ajay Srikanth speaks to its co-founder and Executive Trustee, Mr. SantanuMisra, about the organization, successes and plans for the

Ask him about the beginnings, and he says “Smile Foundation was established in 2002 by a group of friends- well established corporate professionals, who came together with the sole aim of giving back to the society. Smile Foundation has always thought of its role as a catalyst in bringing sustainable change in the lives of underprivileged children, and their families, by working effectively on the ground and encouraging civil society to be a part of the development process.”

Smile decided to begin with child education, but soon realised that it could not be done without ensuring the total welfare of the child’s family. It is a familiar story; the child wants to go to school to learn, but has to earn a living so that his/her family can live. Once they realized this, they adopted a life-cycle approach of development, keeping children at the centre, but looking at familial well-being as well.

Regarding Smile’s working, Santanu says “Smile Foundation is now working largely in, but not limited to, four subject areas- education, livelihood, health and women empowerment. We have 158 welfare projects on the ground, spread across 732 villages and slums in 25 states of India, directly benefitting more than 3,00,000 children and families.”

The foundation has core programs in all of these areas. Their flagship program, Mission Education, aims to provide basic education and healthcare to underprivileged children. More than 2,00,000 children have been a part of Mission Education since its inception in 2002. The program currently reaches out to 19,000 children via 90 projects in 21 different states.

Smile On Wheels is their national level mobile hospital program. It is essentially a travelling hospital. Mostly active in rural areas, the aim is to discharge direct healthcare to regions that need it the most. Smile On Wheels also made an appearance during the Chennai floods, dispending medicines and other medical supplies.

Step (Smile Twin e-Learning Program) is a livelihood programme that trains urban underprivileged youth with job and soft skills. Participants learn English, basic technical literacy, personality development and similar things. 11,5000 people have been placed in 140 odd companies via STeP.

They also run an empowerment programme for the girl child and women, Swabhiman. Swabhiman runs on the ‘4 S Model’, which means Seeking Healthcare as a Behaviour, Support through Education, Support from Men through Male Involvement, and Sustaining Change in the Community.

Regarding the issues Smile faces, Santanusays “For any development organization, the major challenge is to sustain its projects on the ground to ensure maximum SROI (Social Return on Investment), while also scaling up to reach out to a large number of people.In a country of size and diversity of India, this challenge becomes intensified.”

Smile adopts a service delivery approach of development, rather than the advocacy based one, which means their projects are operational 365 days in a year, with the situation on ground being far from ideal. He says the journey, while challenging, is definitely rewarding.

He also says that the CSR mandate has been a boon to NPOs and NGOs across the country, as this guarantees some amount of funding. However, he claims that individuals are prone to religious giving than social giving. He believes that a change here will be a huge boost to social causes across the country.

Smile has a rather unique feature called “Social Venture Philanthropy”. They train grassroot NGOs across the country to function better, and have trained over 500 organizations via their Empowering Grassroots Program. Which makes sense when you think about it. Change always begins at the roots, and these organizations have played a large role in bettering the lives of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Training and giving these NGOs the tools to perform better is undoubtedly the best way to level that pyramid.

Smile Foundation has won quite a few awards for the conception and handling of their programs. As of date of writing, all four programmes focused on their core areas have been awarded and recognized by organizations such as ASSOCHAM (Education Excellence Award 2013 and Best NGO of Skill Development and Placement Training 2014), Institute of the Chartered Accountants of India (Best CSR Project in Women Empowerment 2015) and GE Healthcare (Modern Medicare Excellence Award).

Smile Foundation has been evaluated by some of the most reputed Indian and International evaluators including INTRAC London, KPMG, India Development Foundation and PRIA, and has met their expectations and norms. Santanu stressed that credibility and accountability have always been the benchmark for Smile Foundation, and are achieved through the promotion of principles of good governance in its processes and practices. “We have a four-tier audit and evaluation mechanism which reviews programmes and projects, internal operations, compliance of statutory norms and conducts an external evaluation to ensure the impact of various welfare projects, as well as complete transparency and accountability in utilisation of funds.”

Regarding the future, this is what he has to say. “In the coming years, Smile Foundation will be making further efforts to benefit a larger population with its projects, at the same time enhancing the existing ones and turning them into model grassroots projects, that are scalable and replicable. We will also be taking up more initiatives to reach out and sensitize the civil society, particularly children and youth, to be change makers.”

“Smile Foundation is now working largely in, but not limited to, four subject areas- education, livelihood, health and women empowerment. We have 158 welfare projects on the ground, spread acros “For any development organization, the major challenge is to sustain its projects on the ground to ensure maximum SROI (Social Return on Investment), while also scaling up to “In the coming years, Smile Foundation will be making further efforts to benefit a larger population with its projects, at the same time enhancing the existing ones and turning them into model grassroots projects, that are scalable and replicable. We will also be taking up more initiatives to reach out and sensitize the civil society, particularly children and youth, to be change makers.”

Box Office (September 18, 2010)

As the trailblazers who built India’s nonprofit sector begin to step aside, a new study shows that NGOs face a significant gap in next-generation leadership. There are barriers to bridging this gap and building blocks to surmount them, but progress depends on founders and funders viewing leadership development as mission critical.

Disheartened over the teacher-student disconnect that impeded learning in India’s mainstream public education system, a veteran educator named Elizabeth Mehta believed she had a solution: a model where teachers, teacher educators, and students learn from each other. In 2003, having developed seven women from Mumbai’s marginalized community into skilled, early childhood teachers, she and her husband Sunil Mehta launched an NGO called Muktangan, derived from Hindi, meaning “free space.”

Over the ensuing years, they launched seven municipal schools plus a teacher education center, and partnered with UNICEF to train government “master educators” who, in turn, trained more than 10,000 teachers in the state of Maharashtra.

As Muktangan scaled and the work of managing the NGO grew, the Mehtas decided to gradually transition out of day-to-day leadership. They recruited three separate executives in succession, in an attempt to find a new leader for Muktangan. For different reasons, all three amicably departed.

The Mehtas have now turned to building a senior team from within the organization and coaching its members to lead, as it is this team that shares Muktangan’s values and vision. They have identified a promising individual from the team, who will ultimately take the NGO’s helm. “If Muktangan is going to sustain and expand, it can no longer be led just by us,” says Elizabeth Mehta. They just had to find the right leader.

The Mehtas’ story is not uncommon. Their conundrum—how to let go of an organization they brought to life and successfully transition to a new leader—extends across much of India’s social sector. Our research reveals that widespread doubts persist about whether NGOs and funders have done enough to develop the leaders who will replace the sector’s first-generation pioneers.

Gaps in Leadership Development

In part, the sector’s misgivings stem from a growing recognition that many Indian NGOs overly depend on a single leader, often the founder. A recent Bridgespan Group survey of approximately 250 NGOs (to the best of our knowledge, the first data-driven study of NGO leadership development in India) revealed that founder dominance runs deep. Founders are engaged with about 88 percent of NGOs launched more than 20 years ago and have remained at the helm (as “founder-leaders”) of more than a quarter of these organizations. And founders are involved in 99 percent of NGOs launched between 11 to 20 years ago. Yet these founder-leaders do not often think about the next generation; 50 percent of the surveyed NGOs do not have any leadership succession plans in place, and more than 70 percent of NGOs lack a succession plan even for their senior-most leader.

Diving in further, we probed a set of exemplar NGOs profiled in the Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “Why Indian Nonprofits Are Experts at Scaling Up,” which spotlights 20 organizations that have extended their reach to millions of constituents. With an average tenure of 22 years, founders currently lead—in title or in practice—65 percent of them.

Like the Mehtas, some of the pioneering social entrepreneurs who launched NGOs a decade or two ago are beginning to relinquish their spot at the peak of the organization’s pyramid. Those who are contemplating a transition or have recently done so include: Madhu Dasa, who gave up the CEO post at Akshaya Patra, which he founded in June 2000; Dipak Basu, who conceived Anudip in 2005 and recently brought on an executive director to begin managing the NGO day to day; Matthew Spacie, who founded Magic Bus in 1999, attempted to bring in a successor for several years and recruited Jayant Rastogi as the CEO in 2016; and Vishal Talreja, who launched Dream a Dream with 15 others in 1999 and remains as chief executive, but restructured the organization in part so he could relinquish some of the decision-making.

Given the long tenures of some NGO founders, the pace of turnover will likely accelerate in the coming years. The next generation of leaders will soon have to fill the vacuum. But according to our survey and more than 50 follow-up interviews,1 they are ill-equipped to do so. More than half of the surveyed NGOs do not feel confident that anyone internally could effectively lead the organization in the absence of their senior-most leader.

“Most leaders do not strive to develop leaders,” says Megha Jain, an associate director at the strategic philanthropy foundation Dasra. “Many acknowledge [the need] when pointed out, but do not think about it as a primary part of their job or prioritize it against other urgent, day-to-day deliverables.”

Source: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/ngo_leadership_development_in_india_from_pioneer_founders_to_homegrown_lead

BANGALORE ( September 4, 2017 )