There is a kind of magic that happens when you give. Not the kind with fireworks or Instagram filters, but the brilliance of someone’s life shifting just a little, because another person cared. Daan Utsav is about that magic. It is India’s festival of giving, celebrated from October 2-8 every year, when people large and small come together to give what they can — their time, their skills, donations, kindness.
This Daan Utsav 2025, we want to pull aside the curtain and show you how Smile Foundation is turning giving into change and how you too can gift a smile, or maybe something more too.
What is Daan Utsav and Why It Matters
Daan Utsav (formerly Joy of Giving Week) is a week that asks us: what does generosity mean, beyond the wallet? It’s not owned by any one group — schools, corporates, NGOs, families, strangers all join in. You can give money, but you can also give your ears, your hands, your ideas. That’s what makes it powerful.
It is during this week that the ripple effects of small kindnesses become visible. A meal shared, a book donated, time spent teaching, a hygiene kit handed out — these are gestures, sure. But they also become part of someone’s story, their hope.
Smile Foundation: Gifts That Multiply
Smile Foundation, since its inception in 2002, has been turning those gestures into systems that uplift. We are among India’s large grassroots organisations, with over 400 ongoing projects in education, healthcare, livelihood and women’s empowerment across more than 2,000 villages and urban slums in over two dozen states.
Here are pieces of their work that shine especially during Daan Utsav, but actually work throughout the year:
- Mission Education: Enabling underserved children to enrol (or re-join) mainstream schools, giving them books, uniforms, learning materials. This is foundational to giving the gift of opportunity. (
- Smile on Wheels (SoW): Mobile health units that reach underserved areas — rural villages, urban slums — providing primary healthcare, preventive check-ups, basic medicines. Health is part of giving too.
- Women empowerment & livelihood: Smile’s interventions train women (and youth) in vocational skills, soft skills, supporting their independence. When you help someone stand on their own feet, the effect multiplies into their family and their community.
Daan Utsav 2025: Gift a Smile
What does “Gift a Smile” mean?
It means choosing to give something that touches more than just the moment. It may be:
- Supporting a child’s education supplies through Smile’s Mission Education
- Contributing to mobile health unit campaigns so villagers can access health care without travelling many kilometres
- Sponsoring a vocational training opportunity for a young person
During Daan Utsav 2024, Smile Foundation partnered with corporates, volunteers and communities to organise “Volunteer Days,” distribution drives, creative fundraising and awareness-spreading.
This year, in 2025, the opportunity is even larger — more children, more villages, more hands needed to reach smiles waiting in silence.
A little girl who dropped out of school because her family couldn’t buy uniforms. Smile’s Donation of Uniform and Stationery programme (as part of Mission Education) helps her return. A boy whose nearest clinic is hours away, gets healthcare in a Smile on Wheels van. A young woman in a slum is trained in tailoring or basic digital skills, starts earning. These aren’t big numbers in headlines, but in their homes they are everything.
Giving Not Because You Have to, But Because You Can
In many of my conversations, people say, “I don’t have much, what can I give?” The answer is: whatever you do give matters.
- Time: volunteer to teach or mentor
- Resources: donate books, clothes, health supplies
- Skills: if you are a designer, teacher, storyteller — offer help in that capacity
- Money: even small donations help run projects that reach many
Smile’s website provides clear ways to Donate, Volunteer, Partner.
Daan Utsav 2025: How You Can Participate
Here are some practical ideas:
- “Book Smiles Drive” – collect books from friends/neighbours, deliver to Smile-supported schools
- SkillShare Weekend – teach a workshop (drawing, music, coding) with children in your area or online
- Health Camps – support or volunteer for local mobile units under Smile on Wheels
- Micro-donations – pick a child’s need (uniform, fee, nutrition) via Smile’s portal, gift that directly
- Spread Joy Online – share stories of people helped by Smile; create a chain of gratitude posts
Why Smile Foundation’s Model Works
Smile’s model works for several reasons:
- Holistic approach: Education + health + livelihood + empowerment. You don’t just fill one gap, you shore up many.
- Deep reach: Thousands of villages, remote slums, underserved areas. It’s not just city-centre optics.
- Partnerships: IDs local people, volunteers, corporate partners — giving becomes shared, scalable.
- Transparency and reporting: Annual Reports, data on numbers reached, projects live, programmes alive. The kind of giving you can trace.
Gift a Smile
So here we are, on the cusp of Daan Utsav 2025. The dates are fixed: October 2-8. The question is: How will you give?
Will you gift a school uniform, a healthy meal, a few hours of teaching? Or lend your skills to make someone else’s day? Or simply uplift someone with your time?
Gifting a smile is not just for big wallets. It is for big hearts. It asks: what can I do, right now, to make someone else’s tomorrow less heavy?
Smile Foundation is ready. Projects are there. The children, youth, women waiting for just a little help — they are there. The act of giving bridges the gap between kindness and impact.
