1 National
Award, 1 Don Quixote Prize, the Aravindan Puraskaram, 14 prestigious
national and international awards and being recognized the most
critically acclaimed film of the year. This has been the success
story of I am Kalam – the feature film produced by Smile
Foundation. But this is not all! After
travelling over 30 international film festivals and humbly
accepting all the accolades and awards it was showered with,
I am Kalam was theatrically released nationwide on August
5th. And it went on to be a favorite with even the most critical
Indian film critiques and was applauded by them as one of
the best films of the year. In short, the film entertained
one and all. But this is just the beginning of a journey.
The journey of Sending Every Child to School! The journey
that Smile Foundation set off on, as early as the very conceptualization
of the film.
The objective that Smile Foundation had
conceptualized the film with, was to reach out to people around
the world drawing their attention to the cause of giving education
to every child that is born in the world as his/her birth
right. Smile was aware of the fact, that the world is already
exposed to extraordinary content, and plain appeals would
not stand a chance in grabbing their attention.
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Keeping this
in mind, Smile Foundation, proactively took the initiative
and the challenges therein to come up with a mainstream Bollywood
film.
To ensure the film reaches individuals, authorities, groups
and communities at all levels, both in urban as well as rural
and outreach areas, Smile Foundation, partnered with its strong
network of 2500 schools across the country, 100 colleges,
50 apex management and technical institutes, 75 corporates
and 160 NGOs. To extend their support for the film and the
cause it was promoting, Centuryply became the presenting partner,
Surya World became the associate partner and Essar Foundation
became the corporate cause promoter. Apex media players like
Star News, BIG FM, Amar Ujala, Andpersand, Laqhsya, Creations,
Live Media, bollywoodhungama.com and Exchange4media also partnered
with Smile for the film thus extending the much needed support
from the media fraternity. Genesis Burson Marsteller Digital,
Ybrant, ETBitscape and 160by2 provided their support for promoting
the film and the cause on the digital and social media platforms.
In addition to this there were many eminent organizations
like IndianOil, HUDCO, VLCC and Alliance Francaise to name
a few, that came forward to support Smile Foundation in this
noble initiative.
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