New Delhi: Smile Foundation has received the 1st ICAI CSR Awards for the ‘Best CSR Project in Women Empowerment.’
The award has been instituted and conferred by the Committee for Cooperative and NPOS Sector and IND (AS) Implementation Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).
Mr. Vikram Singh Verma, COO, Smile Foundation received the award in Mumbai. The Chief Guest Mr. Anant Geete, Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises of India graced the awards ceremony along with Chairman of the Committee for Co-operatives and NPO Sectors, ICAI; President, ICAI; V-P, ICAI; Chairman, WIRC; Chairman, CMII Committee of WIRC, among other dignitaries.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is the national professional accounting body of India. It was established in 1949 under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 to regulate the profession of Chartered Accountancy in India. ICAI is the second largest professional accounting body in the world in terms of membership. ICAI 
“An encouragement in the form of this award from a revered institution like ICAI has renewed our commitment to work harder in the areas of child development with special focus on the girl child. This recognition will also act as a morale booster for our community workers, project managers, supporters, partners and our very own girl children alike,” said Mr. Vikram Singh Verma, Chief Operating Officer, Smile Foundation.
Girl child has been on the centre-stage of Smile Foundation’s national level programmes. Swabhiman, meaning self-respect in English, is an especially designed programme focusing on girl children and women empowerment. The USP of Swabhiman is its innovative and highly effective approach named 4 S Model’which means Seeking Healthcare as a Behaviour, Support through Education, Support from Men through Male Involvement, and Sustaining Change in the Community. As many as 150,000 girls and women have benefited from Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme in the last 10 years.
Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation benefitting over 300,000 underprivileged children, their families and the community directly through close to 200 operational projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, livelihood, and women empowerment across 732 remote villages and slum clusters in 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.