Protect Their Smiles: 100 Raincoats for 100 Children This Monsoon

"This rainy season, let's protect their smiles. One raincoat. One child. ₹250 is the whole price tag."

The monsoon has arrived in Hyderabad. For most of the city, that means a small change in routine — an umbrella by the door, a slower drive to work, a chai break under a tin awning. For a small child from a government school or an underprivileged family, the same monsoon can mean something much harder — a two-kilometre walk to school in the rain, in a soaked uniform, with a wet school bag, all before the first period even begins.

This monsoon, Smile With Shine Welfare Society is running a small, urgent drive: 100 raincoats for 100 children from government schools and underprivileged families across Hyderabad. This blog is a short, honest note on why we are doing this, and why we would love your help.

The Simple Idea

The drive can be summarised in two lines:

100 raincoats. 100 children.
₹250 sponsors one raincoat for one child, end to end.

That is the entire ask. There is no fine print. Every rupee of your ₹250 goes into a warm, well-made hooded raincoat for a specific child from a specific school. If you sponsor five raincoats, that is five children dry on the walk to school for the whole of this monsoon and the next.

Why Raincoats, Why Now

We have been asked, gently, why raincoats. Isn't a meal more important than a coat? Isn't a school bag more important?

The honest answer is: they all matter, and we run drives for all of them. But the monsoon has a way of quietly punishing children whose families cannot afford ₹250 in one go. Here is what a Hyderabad monsoon actually looks like for the children we are on the road to meet:

A soaked school uniform at 8:30 a.m. that does not dry until noon.
A wet school bag that ruins the one textbook the child owns.
A cold, four-hour school day in wet clothes — the first line of a cough, a fever, a week of missed school.
A parent who cannot afford the medicines the wet week leads to.
A quiet decision, some mornings, to just not go — because the walk in the rain is not worth it.

A ₹250 raincoat interrupts all of that. It keeps a child dry. It keeps a school bag dry. It keeps a school day possible. It keeps a small, hard-won attendance record intact.

Government school children walking to school through a monsoon downpour in Hyderabad — some sharing umbrellas, others holding school bags above their heads for cover

A young boy in a wet uniform holding his school bag close to his chest to keep it dry, walking to school in the rain without a raincoat

What the monsoon looks like for the children this drive is for.

Who These Children Are

Every one of the 100 children on our list is either:

A student at a government school in and around Hyderabad, or
A child from an underprivileged family that our team already works with through our other drives — Tuesday breakfasts, Community Learning Centres, and elderly welfare visits.

None of these are strangers to us. Many of them received an Educational Kit from us at the start of the academic year. Many of them are children of the same daily wage workers we meet on Tuesday mornings at coolie addas. This drive is not a new outreach — it is a continuation of relationships we have already built.

This drive is not a new outreach. It is a continuation of the same quiet relationships we have already built with these children and their families.

What ₹250 Actually Buys

We keep our supporter-facing arithmetic honest and simple. ₹250 buys:

The raincoat, end to end

One well-made hooded raincoat in the child's size — durable enough to last through two monsoons.
The transport cost of getting the raincoats to the schools and homes we work with.
The small on-ground team time to hand each raincoat over to the right child, in person.

That is the entire cost breakdown. No overhead lines, no admin surcharges, no vague "programme costs".

How the Drive Will Run

The drive has three quiet phases. We will document each one in follow-up posts as it happens.

Sourcing. Raincoats are being sourced in bulk from local suppliers in Hyderabad — durable, sized appropriately, in bright, cheerful colours (blue, pink, yellow, green) that children actually want to wear.
Distribution. Raincoats will be handed over in small on-ground drives at government schools and community locations. Each child receives their raincoat by hand, from a member of our team, with a small word and a smile.
Documentation. Photos, brief updates and a per-drive impact recap on this blog and on our breakfast log page.

A group of government school children trying on their new blue and pink hooded raincoats at a distribution drive by Smile With Shine Welfare Society volunteers

How the drive will run — raincoats handed over to a small group at a time, on school grounds.

Why This Drive Matters More Than It Looks Like It Does

A raincoat, on the face of it, is a small thing. It is not a scholarship. It is not a meal programme. It is not a health intervention.

But look a little closer at what it actually does:

It keeps a child in school on a rainy day.
It keeps a school bag dry, and therefore a child's one textbook readable.
It reduces the number of wet-clothes-all-day fevers a family has to treat.
It reduces the number of school days a child misses in a monsoon.
It reduces the small daily indignity of walking into class visibly soaked while other children are dry.

And it does all of this for ₹250. There are very few interventions at this price point that carry this much practical, everyday consequence. That is why we chose to run this drive.

Four children in bright hooded raincoats — blue, pink and yellow — jumping and splashing joyfully in a monsoon puddle on a Hyderabad street

A close portrait of a smiling girl in a bright pink hooded raincoat, rain droplets on the hood, greenery blurred behind her

Dry, safe, and smiling. That is the whole point.

The Sponsor Table — Small Amounts, Real Coverage

What You Fund	Cost	What It Covers
One raincoat	₹250	One well-made hooded raincoat for one child, end to end.
Five raincoats	₹1,250	A small classroom cohort covered.
Ten raincoats	₹2,500	A full class section covered.
A whole school section	₹6,250	Twenty-five children of one school section covered.
Half the drive	₹12,500	Fifty children covered.
The full drive	₹25,000	The complete "100 raincoats for 100 children" drive, fully funded.

Every one of these is a real, on-ground outcome that will be photographed, reported and closed out on this blog.

How to Sponsor a Raincoat

There are three easy ways.

GPay / PhonePe to +91 73960 96830 — with a short note "raincoat drive". Any amount from ₹250 upward.
Bank transfer / QR code — via the donate page.
WhatsApp us on +91 73960 96830 — if you would like to sponsor a specific school or a specific number of children.

Contributions of ₹500 and above receive a tax-deductible receipt.

A Small Ask From Our Team

If you cannot sponsor a raincoat this monsoon, you can still help. Share this post with someone who might. Post the poster on your family WhatsApp group. Send it to a colleague at work. The whole drive costs ₹25,000 to complete — that is one round of Tuesday-morning donations from a small group of supporters. It is well within reach if we all put it out to one or two people we know.

A single ₹250 raincoat protects a child through this monsoon, next monsoon, and often the one after that. Very few gifts hold that long.

Be the Reason a Child Walks Into Class Dry This Week

Every raincoat handed over is a small, direct answer to a very simple question: is this child dry today? If we can answer yes for 100 children this monsoon, this drive will have done what we set out to do.

Donate via UPI: GPay / PhonePe → +91 73960 96830

Or: Visit our donation page →

📍 Smile With Shine Welfare Society, Vivekananda Nagar, Mallapur, Nacharam, Secunderabad, Hyderabad — 500076
☎ +91 73960 96830 | +91 70937 37459