As responsible citizens of India, a group of people who were constantly worried about the underprivileged sections of our society founded the Student’s Mobilisation Initiative for Learning through Exposure (SMILE) in New Delhi in 1986. The main objective was to sensitise young people on various social issues. SMILE began its operations in the Northeast in 1995. Since then SMILE has been playing a leading role towards serving the youth specially street children, handicapped children, downtrodden girls, and orphans. With this vision in mind, the founders of SMILE set out to accomplish a mission...

It’s been almost two and a half years since I came for my graduation studies to Cotton College, which is one of the most prestigious institutions of Assam. The very first day of my college I noticed one thing — that the students in my college were not very keen at taking care of their age-old college property. The desks were scribbled over and broken, and nobody was bothered to even replace them. Things have been going the same the same way for ages and till date nobody has taken any initiative to do something about it. One thing which truly surprised me was when I saw a small shanty area...

That day I had gone to Mirza (some 6km from Borjhar airport) with my parents to see the ongoing construction of my father’s engineering college. While taking a stroll around the campus area I happened to meet Tupai Kalita, the supervisor at the site. As I was still chitchatting with him a young woman with a barely-one-month-old baby came to him to collect her daily wages. Kalita took the baby in his arms and said, “She is Geeta (name changed) and her mother had bought her in just five hundred rupees when she was just 2 days old.” I was taken by shock when Bhashwati (name changed), the woman...