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Smile foundation participated in the celebrations of the annual day function of the RPG Group. The event was celebrated with a fanfare at Kolkata on March 6, 2010. The theme for RPG Day this year was ‘Growing with RPG’ on which Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) held the foremost position.
Kids of Smile Foundation in the Kolkata region presented a dance performance during the event. The audience including senior management of all group companies enjoyed the cultural show presented by the kids. chocolates and were also presented with some gifts. Mr. Harsh Goenka, Chairman & Mr. Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman of RPG Group were present through live video conferencing. RPG Group extented a contribution of Rs 50, 000 to the Mission Education Fund of Smile Foundation. Mission Education programme facilitates basic education and health care services to underprivileged children for mainstreaming them and thus promoting the concept of universal education. Nearly 50,000 underprivileged children have been benefitted through 47 projects and more than 70% mainstreamed in to formal schools till now.
Smile Foundation believes in changing the lives of underprivileged children and youth across in order to facilitate a secure future. The participation of Smile Foundation in RPG Day celebrations is an effort to sensitize an increased number of the privileged masses in the region to become a part of the developmental process.
Smile Foundation finances, handholds and support genuine grassroots’ initiatives targeted at providing education and health to underprivileged children in order to achieve scalability and sustainability. The working module is Social Venture Philanthropy (SVP) model, an idea which is known for its success in the business world as Venture Capital.
Under the Mission Education programme, Smile has been able to reach around one thousand (1000) children from both rural areas and urban slums through non-formal education module. in last couple of years, we have been able to mainstream around 67% of our students into formal education.
The Twin e-learning programme in Kolkata has created a pool of employable youth from the underprivileged section through a-six month skill enhancement trainings in tandem with market requirements. Popularly known as STeP, programme, 14 of our youth who completed their training in January this year are working in various BPOs, retail chains, banks and hospitality sectors. The Kolkata region has also been able to mobilize a group of 60 students who will be starting their training courses from next month. A batch of 20 employable youth would be ready to be absorbed by July this year.
Apart from these two, at a national level, Smile Foundation also runs a mobile hospital called “Smile on Wheels” which caters to the health care needs at their doorsteps. The women and girl child empowerment initiative known as Swabhiman, focuses on reproductive health and life skill education in urban slums, colleges and institutes.
Through our “Be the Change “initiative, we aim to provide a platform for engaging the privileged masses in changing the lives of the lesser privileged ones in our world. At Smile Foundation, we provide you all with an opportunity to be a part of the reason to bring smile to someone out there, whose smile can make our world a better place to live in.
