"Grateful to be part of this wonderful training journey with passionate individuals from different states. Together, we are learning, sharing experiences, building connections, and strengthening our commitment to creating a positive impact in society."
From 24 to 27 June 2026, Smile With Shine Welfare Society had the privilege of attending the "Together for Stronger Communities" Trainee Refresher in New Delhi — a four-day capacity-building convening organised under Smile Foundation's Empowering Grassroots Initiative in partnership with Change The Game Academy. The convening brought together grassroots NGO leaders from across India to reflect, strengthen, collaborate and commit — four words that became the rhythm of the four days.
This blog is a small record of what those four days looked like for us — the activities we joined, the leaders we met, the lessons we are bringing back home to the streets of Hyderabad.
The Four Pillars of the Refresher
The convening was built around four simple, deeply resonant ideas. They are printed on the event banner and they ran through every session of every day:
Reflect
Pause and honestly look at the work we have done so far — what worked, what did not, what to leave behind.
Strengthen
Sharpen our team's skills, our systems, and our internal culture for the years of work ahead.
Collaborate
Build real, working relationships with other grassroots organisations across India — not just contacts.
Commit
Re-commit ourselves, on the record, to the communities we serve and the long road still ahead.
Day 1 — Reflect: Setting the Tone
The first day was about arriving, in every sense. Grassroots NGO leaders had flown in from many different states — some from large metros, some from small towns most people on the call had never heard of. The opening sessions were quiet, deliberate, and reflective. We were asked to look honestly at our last year of work and write down what we were proud of, what we were still struggling with, and what we had learned the hard way.
For our team, this was unusually valuable. Day-to-day welfare work in Hyderabad is so full — the Tuesday breakfast drive, the educational kits, the elderly visits, the community learning centres — that there is rarely time to step back and ask, are we doing the right things, in the right way, for the right reasons? Day 1 was that pause.
Day 2 — Strengthen: Meeting the CEO of Smile Foundation
Day 2 was full of learning and inspiration. The highlight, for many of us in the room, was meeting the CEO of Smile Foundation and hearing his remarkable journey — from the earliest days of grassroots work to building one of India's most respected national NGO platforms. He spoke not as a CEO addressing a training cohort, but as a fellow practitioner sharing what he had learned from twenty years of community work.
We are deeply grateful to him for taking the time, and equally grateful to the trainers from Smile Foundation and Change The Game Academy for their patient, continuous guidance throughout the day.
The "Needs and Offers" Group Activity
One of the most productive sessions of the four days was a structured group activity called Needs & Offers. Every organisation in the room was asked to put up, on a board, two columns:
- NEEDS — what we are currently looking for. Funding for a specific drive, a particular kind of volunteer, a partnership in a new geography, a piece of expertise we don't have in-house.
- OFFERS — what we can give to other organisations. Photos, templates, learnings from a past programme, an introduction to a partner, a training session, on-ground volunteer support.
We then walked around the room and matched our needs to someone else's offers, and our offers to someone else's needs. By the end of the session several real collaborations had begun — including with NGOs from states we had never worked with before.
The simplicity of the framework is what made it work. In a sector that often confuses big words for big ideas, two columns — what do you need, what can you give — cleared the air and made collaboration possible in a single afternoon.
Day 3 — Collaborate: Project Future Readiness
Day 3 opened with a session called Project Future Readiness — one of the most stretching sessions of the whole convening. It was an honest conversation about the skills, mindset and strategies grassroots NGOs need to prepare for the next decade of work. The world is changing quickly. The communities we serve are changing with it. The session asked: are we ready?
We came away with a list of things to think about for our own organisation — from how we collect and use data, to how we tell our story, to how we develop the next generation of volunteers, to how we plan our finances three years out rather than three months out. None of this is glamorous work. All of it is necessary.
Day 4 — Commit: Closing and Carrying Home
The final day was about commitment. Each organisation in the room was asked to write down, on paper, three specific things they would do differently when they returned home. Not vague aspirations — specific, dated commitments. The papers were photographed, exchanged, and in some cases signed across organisations as a small accountability pact.
We will not list our own commitments in detail here — some of them will reveal themselves in the next few months of our work — but they touch every part of the organisation: the way we run our Tuesday Breakfast Drive, the way we document our Monthly Programmes, the way we onboard new volunteers, and the way we plan our annual Educational Kits Drive.
The People in the Room
The most quietly powerful part of the four days was the people. The cohort was made up of grassroots organisations from many different states, each doing very different work — from rural education in eastern India, to disability inclusion in the west, to child protection in the north, to homeless welfare in the south. Different states, different communities, different mother tongues, different theories of change — and yet a quietly shared sense that what we were doing mattered, and that we were better together than apart.
We are deeply grateful to Smile Foundation and to Change The Game Academy for putting that room together. A convening like this is more than the sum of its sessions — it is also the conversations that happened over chai and dinner, the late-evening exchanges of numbers, and the quiet promises to stay in touch.
About Smile Foundation's Empowering Grassroots Initiative
Smile Foundation is a national-level development organisation based in New Delhi that has, over many years, built one of India's most respected NGO ecosystems. Its Empowering Grassroots Initiative is a long-running capacity-building programme that supports small and mid-size grassroots organisations across the country — through training, peer learning, and mentoring. The "Together for Stronger Communities" Trainee Refresher is one of the flagship convenings of that initiative.
Change The Game Academy is a partner organisation that supports grassroots NGOs with skills in local fundraising, narrative-building and donor engagement. Their faculty co-led several of the sessions at the Refresher.
We are honoured to have been included in this cohort, and grateful for the trust placed in our work.
What We Are Bringing Home
We will close this post the way we closed our flipchart on Day 4 — with a short list of what we are bringing home. The detail of each will show up in our work over the coming months.
- A tighter way to document our work. Better photographs, clearer data, faster recaps after each drive.
- A real "Needs & Offers" board for our own team. We will publish ours quarterly, so supporters can see exactly what we need and what we can offer in return.
- A small partnership pipeline. We left Delhi with a handful of warm contacts across other states — some of those will turn into joint work.
- A more deliberate volunteer onboarding. Right now, new volunteers learn on the job. We can do better than that.
- A three-year plan, not a three-month plan. A specific outcome of the Project Future Readiness session — finally pushing us to look further out than the next drive.
Thank You
Our heartfelt thanks to the team at Smile Foundation, the trainers from Change The Game Academy, the CEO of Smile Foundation for his time and inspiration, and every grassroots organisation in the room. We came to Delhi as one of many small NGOs. We left as part of a quietly powerful national network of people who care deeply about the same things.
Be a Part of What We Bring Home
The work we re-committed to in Delhi happens, in the end, on a Hyderabad pavement on Tuesday morning. Sponsor a plate, a school kit, a Father's Day shirt, or simply join us as a volunteer.
Donate via UPI: GPay / PhonePe → +91 73960 96830
📍 Smile With Shine Welfare Society, Vivekananda Nagar, Mallapur, Nacharam, Secunderabad, Hyderabad — 500076
☎ +91 73960 96830 | +91 70937 37459
Explore More on Our Site
- All Events & Gatherings
- All 12 Interventions
- Tuesday Breakfast Drives
- Monthly Programmes
- A First Father's Day for Many — Father's Day Celebration
- 200 Plates, One Tuesday — June 23 Breakfast Drive Recap
- 50+ Children, One Drive — Educational Kits Distribution
- Founder Smt. Grace Mani Honoured with the Bharatiya Seva Ratna National Award
- Photo Gallery
- Donate