The Gift a Smile programme primarily brings free modern and holistic education to children that are outside the reach of government or private schools. These free schools are run in collaboration with Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth Trust and fall into three categories: rural, tribal and slum schools.

·  Rural schools are established in villages close to a major city, with road access and electricity.

·  Tribal schools are established in remote areas where neither roads nor electricity exist, sometimes up to 30km away from main roads.

·  Slum schools are established in urban areas.

The rural and slum schools follow a conventional education program, while the emphasis of tribal schools is on providing a basic education platform with development of entrepreneurial and vocational skills. We also run Heritage schools with emphasis on preserving India's Vedic tradition.

• Tribal Schools

Those from tribal areas are economically challenged and the culture of tribal groups, preserved for thousands of years, now faces the threat of extinction.

To counter this, schools were started in the tribal areas of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Tripura (North East India). Today, there are 22 tribal schools with more being established in remote areas where neither roads nor electricity exist.

• Urban/Slum Solution

Apart from the strains of poverty, children from slums are often caught up in crime and violence. To provide quality, value-based education to children in urban slums we run six slum schools in India, providing education to 500 students.

• Rural Schools

To encourage attendance at school in rural areas, uniforms, books and bags are provided along with free education. Students are given nutritious mid-day meals and parents are counselled about the importance of education. School buses transport children often from distant villages. All these incentives encourage children to attend school. The attendance rate is 98% with very low dropout rate.

Children are not only given free education at this VVMVP school in Bengaluru but also provided a sports curriculum to keep them engaged and excited at school. 

In 2014 the telecom giant Tata Communications joined hands with IAHV to facilitate higher learning outcomes for children through ICT and sports based interventions.

Overall 238 students participate in various sports competitions at taluka, district and state levels, 78 of whom have won laurels in football and athletics. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Gulu who came to the school from Assam, aspires to join the Army and is looking forward to his next tournament in Mumbai. His self-stitched, patchworked shoes would not accompany him and his friends as Tata Communication has taken responsibility to sponsor their football kits for the tournament.

Key milestones achieved by this school are:

In India, one in three students who start school end up dropping out before finishing school. If they do continue, approximately 30-40% of students in Class IV-VI in government schools lack the ability to read and write. With no one to guide them, students from poor families turn away from school and find refuge in crime, drugs and child labour.

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In order to augment the existing education model, we initiated the Vidya Shilpa program that engages with students, parents, teachers and school administrators, making education delivery more efficient.

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Our impact so far:

• Over 30 government schools in slum areas were adopted under this project that cater to around 7000 children
• 1496 students who were unable to read/write in Kannada became literate through special classes
• Average attendance of students improved by 10%
• Over 250 students re-joined school
• 10-30% increase of the parents' participation in child’s education across schools
• Over 2700 children participated in medical and environment awareness camps conducted as a part of this initiative

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