As hosts of the Golden Jubilee Inter IIT Sports Meet, IIT Bombay launched Mashāl, the first ever pan IIT social initiative. Smile Foundation has been chosen as the cause partner and the initiative will be spread across all 16 IITs with the objective of promoting and supporting education of underprivileged children under Smile Foundation’s Mission Education programme.
Incidentally, this is the first ever occasion that brings all 16 IITs together in order to raise support for the cause of Primary Education. A series of subsequent marathons has been scheduled in the other IITs over October and November 2014, where participants will run for Smile Foundation and the cause.
During the inaugural run at IIT Bombay, the student fraternity showed great excitement and eagerness to participate in this ‘run for a cause’ and over 1000 students participated in the mini-marathon.
Asmit Jain, Events Head of the student organizing committee, said, “Mashāl started off as an idea to unite the IITs towards one noble purpose, and with the help of Smile Foundation we are now seeing it materialize on a scale we hadn’t expected before.”
Santanu Mishra, Co-Founder and Executive Trustee, Smile Foundation said, “I would like to thank IIT Bombay and the whole fraternity for supporting our children. It is heartening to find these youth becoming socially responsible early in life and playing an important role in nation building.”