By Nandan I P, incoming SMILE Coordinator ‘26-27
Roshan, a class 9 student of SMILE, was once terrified of crowds. Not in the way most people are, the kind you shake off before stepping into a room. He was the kind that roots you to your seat, that makes a stage feel like a cliff edge. Then he found himself at a SMILE performance, pushed gently forward by a volunteer who believed he was ready. He danced. The crowd cheered. And somewhere in that moment, the fear left and didn’t come back. Today, Roshan wants to make a career out of dancing. SMILE didn’t give him the talent. It gave him the room. That is, at its core, what SMILE has been doing for a decade.
What the Year Built
Over 200 volunteers from the IIMA community participated in this year’s Summer Activity Camp alone. A new Computer Science curriculum, covering everything from Excel and PowerPoint to practical AI tools, was introduced to make students job-ready, not just exam-ready.
The year’s most visible milestone came at The Red Brick Summit 2025, where SMILE hosted Lakshya, its first-ever case competition. Four hundred and fifty teams were challenged to solve a real-world problem: how do educational NGOs like Pratham and Teach for India scale without losing quality? For a club built around a single centre under a flyover, it was a statement of arrival on a national stage.
Outgoing coordinator Nihaal Ahamed led the team through all of it. Ask him what he’s most proud of, and he doesn’t reach for any of the above.
“You’re managing a team, making sure every volunteer shows up and every session runs, and somewhere in the middle of all that, you forget to ask why you started. Then a child looks at you and says, ‘We will miss you next year. Will you come back? Even just once?’ and the whole year collapses into that one moment. Not the logistics, not the coordination, not the late nights. Just that.”
The Students Who Carry the Story
Teena walked in three years ago knowing no English. She now ranks first in her class and wants to become a teacher. Harsh scored 98.01 percentile in his boards and is preparing for the IPM programme at IIM Indore. Shraddha built a solar system model for Science Day and decided, somewhere in the process, that she wants to be a space scientist.
These are not exceptional cases. They are, at SMILE, the expected outcome.
The Unfinished Chapter
Every tenure leaves something on the table. For Nihaal, it was a vision he could see clearly but never quite reach.
“I always felt we were one good plan away from something bigger. I wanted the SMILE kids here more often at our fests, our sports days, our celebrations, not as guests, but as part of the chaos. Logistics and commitments got in the way every single time. The vision was clear. We just ran out of runway.”
He calls it the unfinished chapter. And in leaving it named and described, he has done something quietly generous, handed the next team not a blank page, but a clear starting point.
What he asks them to protect is harder to quantify than any initiative.
“SMILE worked because nobody treated it like a line on their CV, and the kids could always tell the difference. That kind of genuine care isn’t something you can mandate, but it’s something you as a team must protect fiercely. Go in with structure, yes, but stay soft enough to let them teach you something, too. Because sometimes, you never know when the roles reverse. That balance? That is SMILE.”
A Familiar Stranger
As the incoming coordinator for the academic year 2026-27, SMILE feels like going a step back in time. Before IIMA, I spent two years as a Teach for India Fellow, in classrooms in Mumbai, teaching Class 9 and 10 students. I have seen the other side of this equation. I know what it costs a child to show up every day to a system that wasn’t built with them in mind, and what it means when someone shows up for them anyway. When I came across SMILE, the decision was straightforward. I saw it as a natural extension of what I had previously worked on and what I wanted to do.
As this year’s team slowly takes shape, our focus for the year ahead is less about building entirely new programs and more about deepening something that already exists, the relationship between SMILE and the broader IIMA student community. We have events that draw strong participation, but we want SMILE to be part of the everyday rhythm of campus life, not just its landmark moments. The most durable institutions are not built on annual highlights. They are woven into the ordinary.
The Room Remains Open
Roshan dances now. Teena teaches her classmates. Harsh is applying to IIM Indore. And somewhere in a classroom under a flyover on Gyan Shakti Marg, a new volunteer is walking in, thinking they are the one doing the teaching.
They’ll figure it out soon enough. The room is still open. The baton has been passed. And SMILE, as it has for ten years, keeps going.
